>> you're watching book tv on c-span2 every day with the latest nonfiction books and authors . c-span2: created by cable television companies as a service and brought to you today by your cable television provider. >> welcome to another summer evening with book tvs binge watch series. tonightwe're focusing on books written by former first ladies . the first lady to venture into publishing was nelly taft who recalls her time in the white house in her 1914 memoir recollections in four years. 10 other first ladies have published memoirs. we're going to focus tonight on five women who have served in that positionin the last 50 years .

up, rosalynn carter. she served as first lady from 1977 to 1981 and she's the author of five books and in 1984, or best-selling memoir first lady from planes was released . mrs. carter's subsequent book have focused on caregiving mental health care. a subject she has championed throughout her life. now from 2010 years rosalynn carter talking about her book within our reach, ending the mental health crisis. >> thank you very much. thank you. i'm really pleased to be here tonight and really neat to see so many peopleinterested in my book . i've been on a book tour this week area i started on monday and i got the same two questions every time so i thought i would tell you what

they were. the first one is how did you get involved in mental health ? the second one is why did you write the book? so i'm going to tell you why i got involved in mental health . i was campaigningfor jimmy carter . you can't hear me? i'm telling you how i got involved with mental health issues. i was campaigning for jimmy and he ran for governor the first time and he lost the first time. we got in late. a leading democratic candidate dropped out and he was a big segregationist and this was 6 6. a long time ago. i'm pretty aged. and so nobody would run against him. he was very popular jimmy said he can't just let them have it and we didn't have long to campaign and i never had the campaign but i drove

from one town to the next and passed out brochures and went on to the next town. very disorganized campaign. but 1963, the community health center act was passed in this was 66 and they were beginning tomove people out of our central state hospitals . they institution, overcrowded, terrible conditions into the community but therewere no community mental health centers yet . and i had so many people ask me what will your husband do with our loved state if he's elected governor. one day i was standing at the gate of a factory in atlanta georgia at 4:30 in the morning for the shift change. that's a good place to be because the whole bunch of people coming in and passing out brochures this woman came out and she was really small. elderly. had lint all over and i said

you could tell how tired she was from working all night and i said i hope when you get home you can get some sleep and she said i hope so too because, but we have a mentally ill daughter and we struggle to pay for her care. my husband stays with her while i work and i stay with her in the daytime while he works . and that worried me, what was she going to find when she got home? i worried all day, she didn't say which but her daughter was awake when she got home. i was thinking about whether she got him to sleepor not so that time , the same day i was running around and she came to town and the gym was going to bein the night . i thought it was a disorganized campaign and so i stayed, i got in the back of the room and he didn't know i was there it was close to the election, so i got in the back of the room and he

was shaking hands, people came up shaking his hand and i don't know whether you stand in the receiving line but he would be talking to somebody like this and reach for the next. he did that, he had my hand and when i got in front of him he said what are youdoing here ? i said i want to know what you're going to do when your governor or people withmental illness . and he said were going to have the best program in the country and i'm going to put you incharge of it . well, he didn't put me in charge of it is i didn't know anythingabout . but then when he was elected governor four years later , he was i think he was a month before he established the governor's commission to improve service to mentally and emotionally handicapped and i worked on that for 4 years and we actually put

community mental health centers in 123 communities but they were not comprehensive . some of them, most of them well maybe not most of them but some of them were offices in the center of town where people could go to find out where to get help. but i was really proud ofit . when i left georgia. but then when i campaign because it had precedent and because it had in my bio that i was interested in the work on mental health issues everywhere i went in the country i came for a year and i was into state and everywhere iwent , if the people have mental health centers they wanted meto see if . if it was good and wanted to show it off and there were very few and if it was bad they wanted me to help them when jimmy was president so i just developed this real responsibility because when you get , back then people were still putting them in institutions and nobody wanted to talk about it.

even talk about mental illness. when lincoln was governor, somebody heard me at that meeting that night. and i always say that all the advocates in atlanta descended on me, all five of them and that's what it was, five people and when jimmy was governor and i would have a meeting it was a long time before we could get many people to come and we never did get it really, build up a big advocacy but my five advocates were always there and for a good while just a few government employees because my husband was governor but nobody wanted to talk about the issue so it's been a very long time i got involved and the governor's commission, the president's commission, i now have a really good program at the carter centerin atlanta . we live inplains georgia , it's a 2 and a half drive south but we spend two weeks

a month that we schedule a year ahead of time to be at the carter center travel with our project founder and i don't get home as much as i'd liketo . but anyway that's how i got involved. i actually got mental health systems act of 1980 passed . we worked hard and got past in october 1980 area. [applause] november 1980, and the president was elected and my mental health, a whole legislation was abandoned. we had even passed legislation and funded it and it was not perfect but it would have made a considerable difference. it was one of the biggest projects of my life. well, that's how i got started. the other question was why did you write the book? well, you heard how i got started and the situation then and moving out of the

institutions and now, i've worked all this time. i think help for mental illness goes in cycles. patrick, i heard him this morning and it goes in cycles about somebody's interested and doing pretty good then maybe the next president doesn't care about so nothing happens and you drift along for a while. when jimmy funded it, it had great funding to research. and then it drifted a while and then when first president bush came into office it was the decade of thebrain and he added to the research . today we have learned so much. we have from research, we have new treatments, new medications . we now know people can recover and but the reason i

wrote this book is because we spend $120 billion a year on direct healthcare, this company does. that does not count supported housing, supported employment . anything else had just direct mental health care and millions are still suffering. i am so distressed about. i am angry about it because you know that people can recover and not have a system that works, it just hurts me. i wrotethe book because if i want people to know what i know , then we can get over the stigma which hold back everything we try to do . and go on to do what's good and right . so my book focuses on 4 major things. recovery, today as i just said people and it distresses me so much because people can

recover from mental illness and arehealth system , we're going to have to shift away from controlling our mental illness and i have so many people that will tell me about that and one young man obviously dreamed of being a great artist and he was a teenager. i think he was a junior in college and i talked to the doctor and he thought he was going to be a great artist and we went to the doctor and he said we'll see. i think that's what happened in the past, you just said this is it and it's going to be your life. so we're now having to shift from a negative part to enforcing people's strength and saying you can recover and we can help you. that's what our mental health system has to do.

so recovery is one,prevalence is another . one in four adults in this country for a mental illness every year area one in five children develop a mental health illness every year and mental illness does not discriminate. it happens to everybody. it happens to people on the street, it happens to poor, happens to rich and it happens to homeless. employed, unemployed. it happens to ceos, it can happen to anybody. so it's everywhere. and recovery is part of that stigma. stigma is so distressing tome . it just pulled back funding for programs where people don't feel like mental illnesses can be can help so the politicians and policymakers, people like me

who really try have a hard time convincing our officials to really work through mental health issues and i think that's going to, i hope that's going tochange . we got the parity bill and the healthcare, the new health care bill. has mental health and substance abuse disorders in the basic health package and i'm really excited. it does waive pre-existing conditions . as great authority for training mental health professionals . and in 2003, in 2002 president bush had another dental health commission that reported in 2002 and did you know that when i looked at the recommendations they were the same one. the same ones i did in1978 .

insurance of mentally ill people , it just distresses you whenyou look back and see what it is . and the report of that commission was that the mental health system in the united states is in shambles. there's no way to fix it, we need to start over so with these two new bills now and with the consumer network program that is developing because consumers have originated and done the research on recovery. so there was a woman named judy chamberlain in 1978 wrote a book called on our own. and it was a subtitle was about consumers helping others. and then she started meeting with, she had had a bad experience with the mental health system she started getting together groups who had were living with mental illness and talking about how

they can help each other. and it just grew into a movement and one of my friends who is on my mental health task force was one of her early people who had drawn in. he started the first consumer program in the state government in alabama. my other friend is from georgia and has lived with bipolar and is in recovery with one of the others and he started the first consumer program in the government in georgia and he also then started working, they started meeting and they started bringing in people that they knew were living with mental illness and talking to them and mentally ill people need respect. they need housing. they need a job. so the consumer network help them with those things area

and people recover. some recovered without even taking medication anymore and some take medication therapy but they recover and live good lives in the community. raising their families, working, young people going to school will have been living even with the major illnesses people can recover. and that in georgia, can you hear me in the back? now in georgia the one who started the consumer network and the government, consumer program was able to get medicaid for the consumer counseling that appears and that in georgia we had 500 p or, i guess 500 p or mental

health specialists, certified mental health specialists and they go from communities and just meet people. a lot of people now come to see them they go into communities and if they see somebody homeless, that's suffering from or living with mental illness, they fold them in. it's just been a wonderful program and now he's running all across the country. i think it's in 40 states but i'm not sure but there's one in maryland i know because i had a book signing this morning and somebody from the consumer network let me sign a book to my consumer network friends. so i know it's in maryland now. it's in others but the reason i'm optimistic about the future is because what we know about medication from research, from the consumers

being able to help people recover, i think the movement is too strong now. i just don't think they can set us back and particularly since the government and the new health care bill and the new parity and i've always felt that if insurance covered mental illness it would be all right to have it . it would legitimize it. and that would mean an awful lot of people with mental illness as i have high hopes. and the other thing is invention. we're now learning so much about prevention. though much about building resilience in children and we have learned that mental illness sometimes is developmental. and i think 50 percent of all mental illnesses are diagnosed in children by age

14. 75 percent by age 24 and we have also learned and for any parents here with babies, we need parenting classes because when babies are growing, when children are growing they need the attention. they need, people need to watch their babies to see how their rapport develops. . how they nurture with their parents develops. they need to watch the age-appropriate milestones like either they crawl at the time or walk at the right time. and even when they're starting to nursery school to see howthey react with their peers .and we need to get

this word out because now we have, we know that if you detect that illness early and intervene, there are interventions that work, that mitigate the problem from developing. sometimes they can prevent it from developing into a major mental illness. it always mitigates it, not makes it as bad. so those are the themes of my book and i'm pleased that you came out and i'm so excited thatyou're interested in mental health . and you can help because you can go to your policymakers and let them know how important this is and you can go to a community melt mental health center andvolunteer . the people who are interested and care about those with mental illness can really contribute and i just am pleased to be here and i

think i'm going to besigning a book for you . thank you very much. [applause] >> every saturday evening the summer book tv is taking the opportunity to open up our archives and binge watch with a well-known author area tonight our focus is alittle bit different . looking at books written by former first lady's. next is former first lady barbara bush. she served as first lady 1989 to 1993 and was the author of five books including 2 memoirs. as she was well known for her children's bookabout her dog . her two memoirs were published in 1994 and 2003. here is the late barbara bush discussing thesecond one , reflections at the texas book festival in austin. >> i love writing my memoirs and the urge to write was

still there. i saw my good friends mary higgins clark and told her that and she suggested that i write a novel and she said it would be very very easy. she recommended i do what she did . a plot, know the ending and work back. mary told me when her characters talk to her they won't let her say something, she knows that she's on the right track. it's as if they tell her i wouldn't do that or i wouldn't say that . certainly sounded easy so i sent forth to write a mystery novel. i made up what i thought was a rather interesting plot that centered around 2 female roommates, a flight attendant and a secret service agent who never stayed in town long enough to meet any attractive eligible men. they decided to get in touch with an escort euro.

you know, a dating service. all the men, one woman dated ended updead . now like mary i knew the killer and i worked my way back . i had one huge problem. my characters never said one word to me. i spent hours waiting. nothing. and besides that, my conversations were deadly stiff, awkward and really boring. so i decided to leave the imagination for the real writers and the stick to what i knew.after all, life had not stopped after the white house. the last 10 years and then filled with travel and new experiences , making new friends, working on causes that we care strongly about and the usual ups and downs of a large close family. and some very exciting moments. i'll bet you didn't know that outlaw biker magazine squared me first lady of the century.

this of course accompanied by a picture of my head superimposed on a curvaceous body draped over a harley-davidsonbike . biker babe of the century i think was one headline . it was quite an honor and certainly worthy of another book and yes, there were two sons and one who became governor and one who went on to be president so they really were somethings i could write about . as for research i didn't have to do any area in trying to remember what happened when and whosaid what to whom , i didn'thave to worry about that either . i've been a devoted diary keeper for years so all i had to do was take my diary already on my computer, turn it into some kind of readable prose, take out an opinion or two maybe, not all that some .

some things are left that's unpublished. i toiled away usually in the early morning, sitting with my laptop in bed while george read the newspapers. while i wrote, he cursed . somehow it all worked. already people are asking me if there would yet again be another sequel. at age 78 i rather suspect not. but who knows, just as life didn't stop after the white house doesn't stop either as you approach 80 years of age andbeyond . especially if you're married to george bush riyadh after all, this is the man who wears he's parachuting one more time on his 80th birthday. he jumps on his 75th birthday and he loved it and incidentally he raised $10 million or m.d. anderson houston's great cancer and researchhospital .

now, on 13 june, this is the day after the gala for him to celebrate his 80th he will make his last jump and friends around the country are raising $30 million to be shared by m.d. anderson, points of light foundation and the george bush presidential library foundation . this will not only be his last jump but this he swears will be the last time we ever ask anyone formoney . i can clap for that. larry king has announced he is going to jump with george and i think so far he's lined up our texas university grandchild jeb junior. he's going to jump with him area anyway, i have one , i have to share one story that happened this past september area during a trip to russia

george and i were invited to spend a day with president putin at his dacha along the black sea. sort of the russian equivalent of camp david. when we arrived my george was wearing a suit and tie while putin met us in more informal close at the airport. we were very, very flattered and he came to the airport to meet us and while we were driving back to the guesthouse some 20 minutes away, he suggested he would drop us off at the guesthouse and we would freshen up and then he and mrs. putin would want to meet us and wewould want to meet them . so george, we're never going to have a press conference after that so george changed into casual close. he wanted to be like putin area would you believe wet pants and a polo shirt? that's all he had read as we

walked up the hill to meet the putin's and they were walking down it became obvious president putin also changed his close . into a suit and tie. anyway, i found myself writing in my diary that night, this should go in the next book. i do know that writing this book reminded me of a couple of things i've always known area one is that you really shouldn't take yourself or life too seriously. i'd like to read a very short passage from the book to prove my point area a regret. not my only regret but one regret is that i did not keep all the pictures i have gotten from the barbara bush look-alikes. i get at least 4 letters a month and half four years from ladies who have been told they look exactly like me. i'm so common looking at when i spoke to the junior league in toledo ohio in october they had 2 look-alikes.

they can be five feet tall inches or five foot two inches tall or up to 60s two inches tall. they can weigh 120, i'd like that, to 220. they can be 55 to 95 years of age. they all have one thing in common. white hair. i have finally learned to say i wish i did look as pretty as you and in most cases it's true. as you can imagine the mail also brings also the funny surprises. one year shortly after getting the commencement address at texas a and m university i received a letter from a lady who thought i might be amused by something that happened after my talk area she had taken her granddaughter with her to the graduation and when she returned , the little girl to her mother the child ran into the house yelling mom, you'll never guess what i did.

i heard the mother of the president of the united states. i heard georgewashington's mother . [laughter] now i might have been more amused if i didn't sort of look like george washington . now, another letter that truly thrilled me and amused my family came from a dear little girl who said something like dear mrs. bush, great news i've named my heifer after you . this nice child fairly often sends me updates on barbara bush the hacker. barbara competed in the livestock show one year came in eight. i was sorry for my little friend i was slightly really i'm not sure i could have stood the headlines barbara

bush wins fast stock show. which brings me to the next thing that i was reminded of while writing this book. you cannot survive life without a sense of humor. otherwise you will never recover them all the ups and downs and disappointments and wrong turns and one of the reasons i married george bush was that he made me laugh. this was written after the death of our beloved dog nelly. you know, the one who wrote the best selling book about mike and the white house and donated all the proceeds to literacy. millie's book made over $1 million for my foundation. george used to say you work all your life. finally you obtain the highest job in our country and maybe the world and your dogmakes more money than you

do . we were very sad when millie died but thankfully, of the reaction to millie's death made us smile. i wrote in my book, the outpouring of letters, faxes, flowers and a telephone call about milliewas unbelievable . people wrote things like i love her and i will always remember her or i'm having masthead for her. at our first congregational church in kennebunkport they prayed for, they played for the sunday after her death. and one lady wrote that she knew the pain we were suffering. you see, my husband died last year. and that made george very nervous. the barbara bush foundation for family literacy got a $500 contribution in memoryof millie . it was reallysweet . people wrote letters about

their dog step, since pictures of their dog or cat's either living or dead. millie would not have liked the latter one bit. my good friend mildred kerr after whom we named, after whom millie was named had an interviewer and jean becker was interviewed by people magazine. both ladies said that the interviewers said they knew millie had written a book and that she'd been her proceeds to charity but they wanted to know the personal side of millie. what she had done lately. millie was a dog. thank god for a sense of humor. however the most important thing i was reminded of is that i am the luckiest woman in the world. i have a husband who i adore, children that bring us great joy, runs that mean a tremendous amount to us and

we live in the great state of texas which is part of the freest nation in history, and the history of theworld . [applause] doesn't get much better than that. now that i've attended this wonderful festival, life truly is perfect. which brings me to one of my favorite topics, literacy which yes even after all these years is still near and dear to myheart . i still believe that if more people could read, write and comprehend, we could solve so many of our problems. i think we've made great progress but there's still much more work to be done. just this summer i read something that made me very sad. in a recent survey only 50 percent of adults said they had read books since they finished school and only half

of those people by more than two books a year. it certainly wouldn't fit in with this crowd, when they? that's very scary i think and it's also very sad. i can't imagine life without books and reading. i feel like benjamin franklin who when asked what condition of man deserves the most petty replied alone some man on a rainy day who does not know how to read. now, i'm sure there's an event anywhere that's working harder to fix this problem than the texas book festival. outed in 1995 then texas first lady laura bush. laura's mother is here incidentally and i'm so glad to see her. [applause] i must say,

general wealth is a great example for all mothers, fathers, caretakers, grandparents. she read the laura every single day and that's why, one of the many reasons we have this great gentle, quiet strong first lady. as many of you know the proceeds go to public libraries across texas and in just seven years you have raised more than 1 million 40 three, whatever it is thousands, millions, why didn't they write that out for me? they know i know that it. for 474 libraries. i'm told that a typical grant is $2500 for books and reading programs. in many cases that doubles the budget for the book purchases. for these libraries and that is a terrific gift.

the great news now is that laura bush moved to washington. when she moved there she took this great idea with her and in september with the help and in conjunction with the library of congress they held their third national book festival on the mall which has attracted thousands of people each year. and just this year, i'm sure i didn't read about it i know it happened and i wish i had read about it. 75,000 people came out on the mall to celebrate the book. thanks to our texas laura bush so that is a great, wonderful thing. [applause] incidentally, this is free and it's open to the public.

now, laura and i joined forces on another literacy project in texas when the barbara bush foundation for family literacy established the first lady's family literacy initiative for texas of which laura is still the chair. since its beginning eight years ago have given away nearly $2 million to 80 texas family literacy programs. you know, i can't help but think thanks to these and other efforts that your efforts and the efforts of all the wonderful literacy volunteers across our state that someday people everywhere in texas will be able to count books as their treasured friends and companions. and i want to congratulate you all for what you're doing . i am thrilled i finally got the bid although i had to write another book to get it . but thank you very much and god bless you, god bless texas and that's it. [applause]

>> there's some time left for questions if anyone has any but remember i'm so old that i don't hear if i don't like the question. any questions? your pointing at someone? if so, yell. if you got a question you have to stand up and yell area. [inaudible] are you kidding?

the question is are you going to jump withthem. no, i'm going to catch him . yes ma'am. >> i don't have a question but i did want to tell you i did read your first book and i loved it and i'm a teacher and my high school students love it when i wear one red and one blue . >> thank you. any other? yes. >> you i still give my son advice. george bush claimed hedoesn't but that i feel free to. i do feel free to because

neither one of them take it . i have to tell you that all our children are very, very nice at making me very nervous because there calling and seeing how wefeel and that kind of thing and one day marvin called and he said mom , i just talked to george and he said you took a long walk. i thought he was going tosay good girl, mom . i think they're more protective of us now . i don't give much advice. yes ma'am. [inaudible] [applause] >> that's very nice and thank you. thank you for jenna to. [inaudible]

>>. [inaudible] you really have to read my book but let's see . i try not to give names in the book. but we did have one time george and i were sitting on the deck of our house in among ports. we had this little boat called the main coaster, it's a little rubber boat that children are allowed to use and george just loves it when he sees the girls and boys go rushing out in the boat . one day one of the grandsons had a houseguest was racing around the point. and we're sitting on the deck having lunch and george said it was jenkinson's wife judy who was the sportswriter and

he said that the biggest tree in my life to see those children use the main coaster. it's so wonderful .and then the both way way out stop and george hopefully said all my gosh, imay have to go rescue them . because the dying to go out in his boat i guess but in any case he got his binoculars out and the little grandson,, went to the back of this type of. urinated over the side and the boat took off again. and i don't think the little kid ever knew but we had him under ourbinoculars . but, yes ma'am. the last book i read was sent to me and it was called i am as a matter of fact's which was about a woman johnson

started tainted and i've seen the john singer sargent painting when the show came to boston. i thought it was a beautiful painting then but by the time i got to the booki didn't think it was so beautiful . i just thought arm looked weird. i didn't think it was that beautiful but i enjoyed the book . i'm looking for agood book . i read to relax. i worry about my children all the time, particularly our mutual children because i worry about the world and i don't think any president ever had a worse time to be president. lincoln had brother fighting against brother which was a terrible time but there's something about an unknown enemy which is what we're going through now and i think that's very veryhard .

so we worry much more than i think we should . so i read, i tried to read novels. or something that would just make me not remember or think about theproblem . [inaudible] lots of them, truthfully. i love jane austen. i'm listening to a book on tape about the times and the lifeof jane austen . i love dame jack density but there are a few that every book they write i read . >> ..

>> did you ever play golf? >> yes. >> i love your humor back thank you. i wonder why? thank you. yes, i have played golf and george bush left me this morning at college station where he is rushing down to go see the golf and if luck will have it i may make a little tour out there myself. >> yes. >> what about children's book books -- >> what is my favorite children's book? it depends on the age, of course. when i go to schools i usually read the young children and i love a book called amazing grace

and the trouble is when you go to read to children if it is a book you love they read it 400 times and so you have to try to find a book that is new and that has some kind of message in it. i love make way for ducklings and since that book is 60 years old and it has a very good message, i think. it tells you that policeman are there to make life easier and they are compassionate and caring and i like that. i think children should be taught to respect people who are in public service and who are firemen, policemen, senators, congressmen and i believe that serving is a noble occupation. i like make way for ducklings and it is so old maybe they haven't read it. [laughter] [inaudible question]

>> harry potter? let me tell you about harry potter. i used to go to schools and would speak to fifth-graders. i would say how many of you like to read, not many know how but how many like and all the girls would or most of them raised their hands. very few boys. after harry potter came into our lives i would ask how many of you have read a book lately and every hand went up. every boy. they would yell out i've read it five times or their father and mother would tell me i was at the store at 2:00 a.m. this morning when they could buy it or something but i myself tried to read harry potter and i read the first one and i did not like alice in wonderland so i am ashamed to tell you i'm not that kind of reader but am i grateful to ms. rawlings or whatever her name is because she has opened reading to, not only girls but boys but i really didn't like it myself.

[inaudible question] >> what was the question about my son? [inaudible question] >> yes, that is very easy because i can recommend books he can read. he is into more things that his father is now into, let's see, john meacham's book about winston and roosevelt and those are all very good books and or interesting to george w. there are just a lot of great books that have come out about statesmen lately, not just john adams but there are a lot of them and george reads those. [inaudible question] [applause] >> in answer to that people

always said you are not going to live in texas, are you? and i said of course we are paid that's our home. we chose texas and we love texas. that is very nice. we loved midland very much when we lived there too. very much. [applause] [inaudible question] >> you know, i am 78, almost 79 and it depends on what age i guess. when you have four boys and a husband running for office and i'm just not as good in memory on that as i should be. i spent most my life -- i think truthfully, i think sports illustrated, books about athletes and then god willing we finally got a girl. [laughter] yes, sir. right here.

and then you next. >> in your opinion what is your favorite book you have read? >> my favorite book i wrote? i only have four choices so of course my favorite book is reflections. [laughter] thank you for asking. i think millie's book certainly was great because it told people about the white house. now, you. [inaudible question] >> well, i do. i do have a speechwriter. she takes it from my materials because every day i go out and something unbelievable happens to me. i mean, truthfully, i've managed to trip over the funniest

things. i do have a speechwriter. she says we make a great team. she writes and i erase. [laughter] up there. >> could you tell us about the night of the election in your household and what kind of went on when your son was elected president. >> and yes, then was unelected. well, i could hardly tell this crowd because you are probably on either side you are suffering but it was just, i am sure other people have written about this but it was a very moving night. the, you know, we were at a dinner in the family had barely gotten there when florida was called on the gore side which is really wrong because they had

enclosed their poles. that sort of set the tide wave across it that we had to win florida so we went back to the governors mansion and it moved me a lot because our two oldest sons were they were very affectionate and emotional. jenna was there, nora and george and jeb and then a lot of staff, my george of course. then the two men sat and looked at precinct by precinct as it came in and it became clear that that florida would be jobs or george's and then it turned out to be george's. i don't know if you notice this but in the democratic primary in

2002 guess what precincts had troubles with chad's again? the ones the democrats ran, same ones that had a problem with deb and george and gore and since i am outspoken and frank and what was the other word, tart. i feel perfectly free to say that there is no question in my mind that george one florida. [applause] i don't think i put this in my book but in my heart when the democrat national committee chairman and you can throw stuff at me if you want to but they announced in 2002 that they had one goal now is to be jeb bush. i think jeb one by 14%. i would say goodbye. [applause] i am not supposed to be political and i want you to know what i think.

[inaudible question] >> i don't like that if they revisited but i am worried very much about the internet because i can put something on the internet and act like it is the truth and people will then go in there as research. for instance, there was a big article about me recently in the news week because they had bought the right to do that for my book publisher and i spent a lovely date with a really nice girl and about the fourth page from my book was my mother's name and she had my mother or mildred pierce. my mother's name was pauline robinson peers. eldred pierce was joan crawford

in the movie, if you remember. that is sloppy and i'm worried about sloppy and things on the internet that aren't true. we all go to internet to find the truth well now i am feeling shabby about that because i don't think they are necessarily true and i think we got to be very careful that our editors really do do the research. mildred pierce, i mean, didn't she use close hangers on her children, wire ones or somethi something? i will say goodbye and i will go home and see my husband and thank you very, very much. i really appreciate you having me. [applause]

[applause] >> that concludes this morning's session with thank you missus bush. thank you everyone. this is the texas book festival. thank you. >> host: you're watching the the tv on c-span2 and we are spending the evening with former first ladies who are also authors. up next is hillary clinton. she was first lady from 1993 1993-2001 and is the author of eight books, several of them bestsellers. at only to to write as first lady but wrote when she was senator from new york, secretary of state and as a presidential candidate. here she is when she was first lady in 1996 on c-span's book program talking about her best-selling book, it takes a village. >> hillary rodham clinton author

of it takes a village bird why did your mother teach you about raising children? >> she was such a good example. my mother as i write in the book did not have a traditional upbringing and she was born to a 15 -year-old mother and a 17 -year-old father and their marriage did not last and she was sent off to live with her grandparents and that was very harsh atmosphere. but somehow through her own personal will and strength and because of others along the way teachers and relatives and when she was 14 she went to work in another woman's house taking care of that woman's children and that woman served as an example of a mother. she was loving, attentive, caring and there is a great start and alive. >> what about your dad? >> my dad had a different kind of upbringing based on the current family and also parents

had come to this country as young children and they were very intent upon working hard. his father went to work when he was 11 and the mills in scranton and his mother was a strong-willed woman and i would've think over the last several years his mother, my formidable grandmother, who died when i was quite young insisted always on using her maiden name as well so i was very surprised to learn that that at the turn-of-the-century she was someone who started stood up for herself and made her views known. my father had a great upbringing and went to penn state where he played football and i think for him having been committed to taking care of them and coming out of the world war ii depression generation is what he decided to do and did it while. >> were you born in park ridge, illinois? >> i was born in chicago.

>> how did you long and live in park ridge? >> we moved there when i was about four and my parents moved to arkansas to be with us after my father had his first stroke back in 87 so they lived there for 37 years. [crowd boos] what did both of them do for living? >> my mother was a living home maker and my father had a small business that printed and sold [inaudible] he was the only paid employee but sometimes had day laborers that he hired an was closed one man who became a continuing employee but my mother would help out and my brothers and i would help out. >> you had two brothers. >> yes, two younger brothers. >> you and tony treat how much younger? >> he was four years younger and tony was seven. >> how did you get along with them? >> they would say that when i wasn't bossing them around like a powerful big sister we got along. >> did your parents treat them

differently venue? >> as i say my book my father was harder on them. my father had two brothers and he was a real man's man and an athlete and he was a guy who did not talk a lot and wasn't into, you know, reading books very much unlike my mother and so i think he was much harder on my brothers because he did not know what to do with me. both my parents were so encouraging of me telling me i could do whatever i wanted and they were never any distinctions made between boys and girls and my father was sewing patterns are on our own trees and iran with the boys just like everybody else in the neighborhood did but he was, i think, a much more demanding father than my brothers. >> how did you raise chelsea differently? >> actually i struggled despite the difference in circumstances. we had a very middle-class normal upbringing, my brothers and i.

we were lucky to live in the great suburban and great schools and we could come and go because it was a great neighborhood so it's not only the differences that all play today that make me sad because my child's life is not as free and independent as i was able to do and certainly my husband being a governor and a president makes it quite different and i have to struggle all the time to make her life as normal and by my definition normal and i fall back on my upbringing. >> there is a part in the book read say and i think correct me if i'm wrong that chelsea wanted to write her bicycle and you broke down in tears for what reason? >> she was about nine and she and her little friend had been riding around the governor's mansion came running and wanted to ride their bikes at the library about ten blocks away and i got tears in my eyes because nearly every day and sometimes i would ride my bike to the library or to the pool to play with my friends and my

mother would say be home in time for dinner and no one worried about me but i had two little girls and i did not look comfortable and it wasn't because her daddy was the governor but because there were two little girls in the downtown area of little rock, arkansas which is not safe as it should be or that it used to be. that makes me sad. it was one of those moments is a mother that gave me a great deal of regret that we have not taking care of our society in a way that would enable my daughter to be as free as i was. >> chelsea was brought up in your lot and you write about protecting her from public life so did you have to make a decision and even put her in the book. >> it was very hard to do. this book is hybrid in that it is not a memoir by any means but it does rely on my personal experiences both as a daughter and mother as well as my work as an advocate. in my experts so i made the

decision that i did have two included but i was very careful about how i talked about it and i cleared everything with her and did not want her to feel that i was breaching any confidence or, you know, giving her uncomfortable moments as a teenager by talking about it. >> what is it like raising her? >> it has been a real challenge but something that i spend more time on before we moved here than anything else and i had great conversations with jackie kennedy onassis about raising children in the public eye and talk with other people in red coverage of children who were in the white house and that led both of us to make decisions about how we would refer to her and how we would talk about her in public and really we said and i think i'm very grateful that it was so positively received with the press to give her as much space and privacy as possible. >> why do you think they do?

>> i think there are a lot of people who are around our age raising children in the press and i believe they know what they go through because if you are a journalist on television or well-known because of what you write that gives you a taste of how your children can be drawn into your own career and certainly it is much more dramatic where we live but i think they had a certain sympathy and empathy with that. >> you also tell the story in a book about hugh and the president you are governor warned her about awful things that would be said about both of you or least him at the time. >> yeah, him at the time. [laughter] and then she got upset. has she been upset lately? >> certainly she gets a little castrated and concerned as would be natural but starting when she

was about six as i do tell in the book i realize that even though her dad had been in politics since she was born she had been oblivious but now that she is reading and in school that would be different. bill and i talked about it and we thought we should try to prepare her. children deserve to have as much information as they are ready to receive at the ages that they are so elections we do not want to we told stories about each other and she was very upset. but we have continued to work with her and always asking her if she has questions so it's never easy and always painful and hard on not only my daughter but on my mother and other people who care about us and we do our best to reassure them and let them know that unfortunately

[inaudible] >> to say also you like to have one meal together a day so how often do you get that done? >> we get that everyday we are in town. it's usually dinner paired we sit around and talk about what families talk about. what is going on and how school was and where we might go if we can get a few days off or what's happening with friends but we try so hard to do that and it is been something we've done all through her life and will keep up. >> you have a chapter on watching television. >> rights. >> why? >> i just don't think there is any doubt that when i think about the difference in a way i was raised or bill was raised in the way life was back in the 50s with people having a great nostalgia for today the single biggest difference is the role of television in our lives. it is not only the content which

does disturb me but it's also the process of watching, the amount of hours it's only children spend and what it takes them away from doing in the passivity of it and the instant gratification it provides. i say in the book that when you have a two or three -year-old all of a sudden been able to control a remote control device never having to work at play the way we did or the kind of frustrating experiences you go through when you're a young child but to just sit there and passively be entertained changes the way children learn. >> you quote from your own book, 80% of americans responding to the 1993 miracle said they believe tv is harmful to socie society. do you think that's true? >> i think it is true and i think most people believe it's true but people feel helpless in the face of it and i tried in the book to give some suggestions about what parents

could do and what communities could do so that we take back authority in our own homes as against the television and popular culture. >> why do you think it's harmful? >> i think we have sufficient evidence now and there have been a number of studies that have not gotten as much publicity as i would like an [inaudible] is a wonderful job of summarizing a lot of what we know about the effects of television and we know that television has desensitized children to violence, now clearly if you come from an unstructured family with a lot of problems to start with you will be more effective than someone who comes from a more stable environment but all children are affected and it's not just boys where there is an increase in aggressive acting out in schools as well. we note the consumer culture and the kind of manipulation of children that is done even in their own television particularly on television has

an impact and then we know if you compare watching public broadcasting and the educational programming that is here the children who watch commercial broadcast and the children who watch educational programming are better prepared for academic challenges and many ways that we know television can impact children. >> i restricted both the amount and kind of television chelsea watched as a child and even now we check up from time to time on her tv. how do you do that? >> we don't have the same kind of control we used to have when she was smaller but from a very early age we were careful about what she watched and equally concerned about how much you watch. we didn't let her just plopped down in front of the television set. we try to keep her active doing other things. now if she's watching tv we check in what she's watching but mostly it's by talking with her now. what does he think about certain programs and how does she evaluate them and in the book i talk about how important it is for parents to be active viewers

with their children. we will all watch television. bill, chelsea and i watched television together but we try to talk about what television is and how it's very implausible in so many respects and it is drama and you don't have human problems in 27 minutes plus commercials and to give children the capacity to separate what they see on television from what we hope they will see in real life. >> why do you think people in the business [inaudible] why do you think they sell the stuff? >> in the book i talked about how when we drive by an accident on the road but we all watch and we all rubbernecking we all had people telling us to move on don't block the traffic and it is though we have known what it is something were compelled to look left. that's human nature. i don't fault the people who are in the business to make money for doing what appeals to viewers but it's time for all of us to say, both his viewers that

we have to exercise more self-control and responsibility at least as it affects children but also programmers that lets be honest and admit that we have affected how children think of themselves and how they view society and that should not be debatable anymore. maybe then programmers can make more responsible decisions but the president is having a meeting with the major programmers to talk about what can be done on a volunteer basis. the telecommunication bill will need a rating and so i think we are moving in the right direction. >> i bet if a stranger came into your home and began telling your kids stories about the same kind of characters and events using the same words and pictures you would throw him out? >> i believe that. we let television get away with so much more than we permit real people, in person to get away with. we think about the language in

the explicit sexuality in the constant violence i don't think there's any doubt we would not put up with it in person and we would walk away or throw someone out of our house. >> there is this picture on the back of the book. >> that's in the backyard of the white house. the kid is from a school nearby and this is the day we had big bird and sesame street characters as well as other broadcasting characters because there is a serbia talk about in the book that was done at the university of kansas looking at the effects of public broadcasting compared to commercial broadcasting and the kids were all there and we had a great time. >> when did you first say to yourself i will write about? >> i have thought about it for a long time. but i actually took it seriously when the publisher came to see me he's a publisher and president of the trade division

with rebecca the editor and he published my mother-in-law's book which is a marvelous book, reading with my hearts and becky is the editor. they showed up and said have you thought about writing a book and i said i thought about it but it's not anything i've taken seriously and we began to talk a year ago january. >> how did you go about it? >> of something i thought would be a lot easier than it turned out to be. the original plan was when we need to sit down and talk and have the conversation that transcribed and then to have some research done and help editing the transcriptions and basically for that to be the book. i found out that did not work for me. i'm just someone has to sit down and think hard about what i want to say and it takes me many drafts and i had to do in longhand because my computer was still not up to the task that i had undertaken so it took about a year to do.

>> there are 18 chapters and at the beginning of each chapter you have a quote. all the way from 80 bird johnson to john silver to let see, t. washington and some are still alive and here today. how did you go about choosing these quotes? >> i started with a collection of quotes that i had for a long time and i went through those but i found i had to expand and one of my favorite was reading quote books which i did for hours on end looking for exactly the right quote to fit the meaning of wanted to give it. >> what is your favorite one? >> there are a lot that are my favorite but probably if i could read it so that i don't misquote it but [inaudible] that no family is an island. snowflakes on most fragile things and just look what they

can do when they stick together. i love that quote. the book came out in january when we were in the midst of our great blizzard of 96 so it seemed particularly apt. >> i get a sense as i read it that you would have gone ultimately between children and politics. >> it is filled with a lot of my views about how children and political decisions intersect because i do think that all of us in whatever role we are in have a responsibility to children. i don't just mean electoral politics. i mean how we organize ourselves and communities in churches and businesses in schools but the book was suggested by the publisher and i like it because it's sort of a handy size to carry around. i learned a lot about publishing. for example, the number of pages in a book meant that if i had added one more page it would have had to add 16 more pages because of the way books are put

together. so the size was perfect for what i wanted to convey. >> but didn't you get in that you wanted to get in? >> i had some more examples i wanted in and stories that i had in my editor was wonderful in helping me get it down to a manageable size or it could have been hundreds of more pages if i had my way. >> why no index? >> partly because it wasn't meant as a textbook. it is more as a meditation, if you will about my work over the last 25 years with children. also i was running very late in the index would've vetted held up even longer and i was months over the deadline that i originally set and that was something we did not have time for. >> it's been written many times criticism of not giving credit for the person that helped you on if there was one person in the back you say there are so numerous and will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually for fear i might leave someone out so what you

think of the criticism and does some one human being deserve credit for having done a lot of the work? >> many human beings and that was my problem. i had so much help directly on hand i had fans who read every word and critiqued it and i would literally started making a list and i had 60 names and i was nowhere near done and i just put my hands and said i can't do this because i was afraid i would lead someone out. it wasn't only the direct help but the indirect hell. so many people in the book who talk to me on the telephone and others had influenced me for more than 20 years and i thought it was the fairest way to basically thank everybody who helped me. >> what you think of the criticism of the one person that supposedly was paid by simon & schuster to spend time with you and did not get credit? >> i thanked her for what she did for me. she worked for number months she did not work the entire project i was crippled for the assistant

she gave me. >> in the book and the page 148 you have a rhyme, as i was standing in the street as quiet as could be a great big ugly man came up and tied his horse to me. and then go on with this couple of the sentences, i thought in that rhyme in the first year of the white house and my father died and i mother-in-law lost her battle against breast cancer and my husband and i were attacked daily in all directions by people trying to score political points. back to this rhyme, as i was standing in the street as quiet as could be a big ugly man came up and tied his horse to me. where did you get that? >> that was in one of chelsea's nursery rhyme books and we tried to read to her every night and she had this wonderful book nonsense rhymes and that was the prominent one on the cover and we must have read that at least 100,000 times and it served as a way explaining to a child, and later to myself, how things happen in life and you can't

predict what will happen and what should've been the most wonderful year of our lives being inaugurated president had a lot of personal grief and sorrow attached to it. that's the way life is. it's unbreakable. >> what was the impact of your father's death? >> it was dramatic on me personally. i think that we were certainly exhausted from the 92 campaign and did not take time off and went right into the presidents preparation for the transition into the inaugural and then my father was struck by a fatal stroke and with him and hospital for two weeks or so for he died and i think it just was so much when i look back on it now and i think of the entire time. both the 92 during the campaign and then in 93 there was a lot

that happened in starting that year off the wonder of the inauguration and a few months later my father's death was very difficult. >> what did you do about the impact of someone like chelsea did you deal with that directly? >> sure, she came with me for the first week we took her out of school and my brothers were there most of the time as well and certainly my mother was there every hour. she was a part of that and i thought that was important for her. she would be with us for the family and to be with us who never regained consciousness adequately enough to recognize and after the first day or two we did not know he was even there but we were there together and i thought that was important. >> you say in the 16th chapter my father distrusted big business and big government and that is not like some of the popular's today. >> i think that was a very

common strain in american life and that is the way my father felt and the way he talked about both government and business but there needed to be strength on both. you can let either government or business have too much control or authority or be left unchecked or we will rue the day and i think there is a constant struggle in american history between those forces. >> did your mother and father think alike politically? >> no, i don't believe so. my father was raised in the public very strongly so and my mother was always more democratic leading and my father was very concerned and i think more of the fact that my husband was a democrat and from the south or a southern baptist or anything else about him. my father also changed his views as he got older and began to moderate them somewhat and of

course supported my husband wholeheartedly. >> the first political thing can you remember in your life? >> it goes so far back because around the dinner table my father would talk about policies and what was going on we follow the news and read the newspaper and had family discussions so it goes way, way back in probably the first thing i did actively on a national level was when i was a goldwater girl in 1964 and my father was a staunch republican and supported barry goldwater and his knowledge and belief and i participated for the first time at that level. >> what was next? >> let me take that back, first was the presidential election in 1960 between nixon and kennedy. my father was a staunch nixon supporter. >> what was your mom?

>> she had voted for president kennedy but i have a sneaky suspicion she may well have but she didn't tell my father that. during the early 1960s we were constantly talking about politics in my family. going to college and becoming involved in politics and i started off as a young republican was present of the welsh republicans and then i began to read more and study more and decided i had to spend some time thinking about my own political beliefs and i withdrew as president of the young republicans. >> so as you are involved -- was your or was there a moment we said i don't belong here? >> it was more of an evolution. it probably started back in high school and i had an excellent government teacher and we had a mock debate and i was, as i said a goldwater girl but my government teacher made me represent president johnson and made one of my friends who was a staunch democrat of the few in

my big high school speak on behalf of barry goldwater so that meant i had to go and study all these positions and learn things in a different point of view, not just what my father had said or what my community believed in that open me up to looking at things from a different point of view and i think i've always had this mixture of politics and people tried to pigeonhole me as they do everybody in public life and say we know she's a fill in the blank but it's always more completed than that. i think my father's empathy and personal responsibly and what they viewed as a lot of the conservatives believes that i was raised with that i think has been abandoned by many who call themselves republicans i feel very much a part of how i view politics. >> in the book you mentioned [inaudible] >> i think i was 14 or 15? what you remember? >> remember it was my youth minister who in our methodist youth meetings have been talking about civil rights and the

challenge it presented to christians and he took us a group of us down to the orchestra hall in chicago where we heard doctor king speak and then we waited until everyone else was gone and had a chance to shake his hand. i remember being very impressed and i remember the presence and the dignity he had. i remember particularly how he was taking his religion and trying to make it live in the political process which i thought was very interesting and certainly we have seen that in the last 30 years. >> dear member another political figure, may be an elected you met that you was the first national figure? >> i met barry goldwater prayed that was the first national figure. >> what you remember? >> was such an energetic person and we were out at some stop and those of us who are goldwater girls got a chance to shake his hand and i enjoyed meeting him. >> do you have a model of how you treat other people based on something you either learned and

you said i would never be like that or i am going to be like that when i'm in a position like i am? >> think i've drawn from a lot of different people and i've been lucky in the last 20 years to meet many people in public life both here and around the world and i admire people who try to be the same in public and in private and try to be respectful of people who listen to people who don't discount others because of their points of view and that is pretty much the model i try to follow. >> i don't know whether it can do this but in the book you mentioned you knew sam walton and if i remember you were on the walmart board but you are also on the children's defense board. what are the different atmospheres walking into those two different situations? >> you know, picking those two they were much more alike than other situations i have been in and let me see if i can describe that. >> what years did you do this?

>> children's defense fund i was on for 20 years and i went to work for mary aleman right out of law school and i spent summers in law school and then i went on arkansas and stayed on the board and then moved into the white house but there was an atmosphere of debate and concern and intense, i guess -- >> how big? >> twelve, 18 people and there was an atmosphere of give-and-take and people wanted to be involved and it started and miriam was a strong leader and is a strong leader and wanted to know what other people think and would sit and listen. first time i walked into the walmart board meeting sam walton said i want to hear from all the outside wraps, what is going on, tell me what you think and he went around and asked each one of us what we saw happening in

the world and he also was a strong charismatic leader so he was always asking questions and he always wanted to know how to do things better. in a funny way i think i see similarities between him. they both have built extraordinary institutions that in their own ways are unique and have made lasting contributions to our country and so a superficial glance might say what would this conservative, entrepreneur hamilton have in common with this passionate child advocate get i saw these two people as tremendous examples of what you can do if you set your mind to it. >> you say some things in here about corporations and ceos and you point out that a negative or the ceo a large corporation made 35 times what an average factory worker earned in 1993 ceos almost made 150 times the average factory worker wage. did that bother you? >> bothered me a lot.

i think that leaders in our country and that is not just political leaders because i think that's on a day-to-day basis and they have much more of an effect on a people live their lives than the government does. we have to be more willing to identify with people who are working and more respectful of the struggles that people who are trying to make a living in today's economy face and i don't think it makes it right that in the last 20 years corporate executives have profited personally so much when the average worker in america both in factory work and in service industries and white-collar work have seen their wages and benefits expand and i don't think that's good for the economy. put aside all the ethical, moral, socially i don't think it's good and i don't think it's good for the economy. henry ford paid his workers and unheard of wage of five dollars an hour because he knew it was smart business. if you don't pay people and

reflect their contributions for profitability and what they received you will not be able to continue to buy your goods and services. i think we've reached a point in our country were more businesses need to understand that was good was henry ford at the beginning of the century is good for them and you have to share the fruit of our productivity increases in our ability to work with local economy more fairly and that was just those of the top. >> how long were you on that walmart board? >> five or six years. >> there is a quote here and i want to ask if you would agree, you put in your book, unfettered free market has been the most radically disrupted force in american life in the last generation. >> i believe that and that's why i put it in the book. if you look at the argument we've had in our political life the last several years it falls to that we pitted the government against everything else. i don't believe the government has had a bigger impact as

commercial television as a lot of the decisions made that we will compensate people about downsizing corporations and making workers more insecure and i just believe that there has got to be a healthy attention amongst all our institutions in society and that the market is the driving force behind our prosperity and our freedom in so many respects that it cannot be permitted just to run roughshod over people's lives as well. >> when you sat on that board did you ever had to deal with this kind of thing? >> sam walton believed in profit sharing a part of the reason was that i appreciated his business philosophy is that the workers at walmart were able to share in the profits and the executives when i was on the board were very careful to keep the perks down in the offices they had in the way they lived in the way

they treated their fellow associates at every level in the business and i thought that was a good example. >> [inaudible] there are a few voices arguing for more government and skepticism toward government and the emphasis is placed on personal response fully from all citizens, americans do not favor a radical dismantling of government. i could go on but how far should the government go in raising kids? >> it shouldn't. it can't. there is no way a government could raise kids. the government can do things that help support parents who are raising kids and government can also be the safety net for the poor and vulnerable children who for whatever commendation of reasons are not being adequately cared for by their own parents. for example, congress sets the minimum wage. it should be raised but it is not high enough. you cannot support a family on what it is currently paying the

minimum wage. the government also has the response fully to ensure that older people and younger people in particular get the healthcare they need and that is why you should not be thinking about dismantling medicare and medicaid but working at ways to make it more efficient and effective. there are many examples of where what government does has a big impact and it's not just on the poor and vulnerable but government also determines what atmosphere my child will live in. i mean that literally. will the water be clean? will the air be fit to brief? we may determine his progress through environmental regulations and last 20 years and can now swim and fish and rivers and lakes that were so polluted they were literally on fire and the government is the only institution capable of reining in unruly businesses that put profits ahead of people's health. that is kind of thing government has a role in. >> based on all your experiences if you are at the longer first

lady can make the choice of what you wanted to do, in the society that you would like to try what is it? >> i would like to do full time what i did for 25 years part-time which is to be a voice for children and do it in a way that tries to bring people together and to build a consensus. i think we should scrape away the far ends of the political debate and you find most people clustered around the middle brain about their children's future trying to figure out how to make their schools more effective in trying to think about how to control television and these other things we have discussed. i really believe there is an opportunity now for people to get beyond partisan arguments and ideologies and say what works for kids. the divorce rate. for a long time i've been advocating the divorce should be more difficult when you have children. that is not a conservative or liberal or republican or democrat issue but we now know that divorce hurts kids. what can we do as adults either

to slow it down or if it is going to occur to make its impact as limited as possible for the well-being of children. that is the discussion i would like to have a role in helping from the bottom of our country. >> how do you change the divorce laws or how do you slow that down? >> i talk about breaking mechanisms. making it harder and longer for people with children to divorce and requiring mandatory education so that parents if they can't get back together and work out their own differences to help them understand more clearly why using children as pawns in debates over property and support is terrible for kids and coming to some understanding about how they can together help raise their children even after the divorce. >> to talk about both the french and the germans as having things that are better than what we do here. >> and other cultures as well. >> what about the germans connect. >> i am a fan of a lot of the

social policies that you find in europe and i know that they too are going through a rethinking of how to afford their policies but in my conversations with people like chancellor cole or the president they are not talking about cutting back on their support for family to the extent they are talking about doing other things that would free up the economy. that is because they see raising children as a social obligation, not just a parental obligation, even though parents have the primary response ability. the kind of need policies they have for employees particularly young mothers taking care of babies and healthcare policy in germany that is a private public mixture is something i think is worth looking at. the visiting nurses program in england where people come into the homes to try to make sure the parents know what they are doing. that is for everybody from princess diana down to a single teenage mother.

there is more of a recognition that the entire society as a stake in making sure parents do as good a job as they can. >> when we talked about wellesley and yale law school did you travel much? >> no, no i didn't. i traveled a little bit before bill was president but i never had the opportunity to travel much. for me this is been a real eye-opening experience. as i say, i've seen things as far away as indonesia and chile that i think would be useful here in our own country. i know americans often believe we don't have much to learn from other cultures but i would like to see that change where we evaluate what other cultures have done and look at the results. we have such a high level of divorce and high level of violence within the home and outside the home, clearly there are things we could be doing better in lessons we could learn. >> you say the 21st century would be a century of biology. what do you mean?

>> i believe that. essentially it's open space and open the molecule to us as physics and we now know more about biology and i'm particularly concerned that we apply the lessons we learn to raising children and i have a whole chapter on their about the lessons biology particular molecular biology is teaching us. i would like to see an end to the nature to genetics versus environment and it is clearly come equipped with their own genetic background but how that has played as an orchestra depends upon what happens after we come into this world. if we tried to take the lessons we now have from biology and apply them in parenting, and education, we could do a lot better job and how we treat children and how we help train children from the very beginning of their lives. >> do you ever get tired of doing this? >> talking about this? no, i don't get tired. sometimes i get frustrated because i seen such a disconnect between what science and

research now knows about raising children what we do in our own homes as well as in our public debates and in business policy. >> do you ever get tired when someone comes in and says missus clinton, you've got another three interviews to do today on this book so do you say i can't talk this anymore? >> no but i do lose my voice from time to time. i don't get tired about that. >> in the book, you name a lot of people and a lot of companies and one person you name is daniel goldman and emotional intelligence so do you ever worried that you're endorsing someone might come back and hit you in the face? >> i tried very hard and that one woman who does my research worked very hard to make sure nothing would come back and bite me and i tried to learn as much as i could and i read daniel's book and i thought it was a brilliant book and would make a great contribution to what we knew and frankly, i was concerned it wouldn't make a

best seller list which is why i talked about a bit i wanted people to read it so i am sure that there are ways you can criticize anything but i tried to use examples that have really stood up completely. >> what do you find when you are out in public gets the most response? when you speak, one of the techniques that -- what do people respond to? >> several things, a lot of people on the front lines taking care of kids, teachers, pediatricians and nurses, social workers and others are pleased that i'm talking about issues they talk about and given them some validation for the work they try to do every day. there are a lot of people particularly parents who share my concern that you're not as a society doing what we should for children and so they are very open to talking about what works and homes and they want to know about the research that demonstrates clearly that talking to your baby really pays off and that is still something

people don't know. reading to your baby is one of the best investments you can make. i get different responses to coming to the audiences. >> has your mom read it? >> yes, her favorite chapter is the chapter on religion. >> why? >> i think because as i quote her and i asked her what she thought was the essence of religious teaching and she said the good. she believes that more people because of the way they were raised and because of the messages our society turns out has some sense of good and some values for themselves as well as other people we would solve a lot of our problems and there wouldn't be a business policy, government policy become from within. >> what about the reviews? all the stories -- i remember one story we talked about the morning show one day hillary clinton spends $54000 of taxpayer money to fly summer to

do her book signings what is your answer to that? >> i regret it. i wish it didn't happen. i think they made a strong recommendation for security reasons that i have to fly on a maritime plane which is what i fly to other functions and missus bush had to when she was flying around on many occasions and i wish our society was not like that. i would love to go and get on an airplane and talk to people and find out what is going on and occasionally i can get a train ride because they take over the whole car of the train i am on. i really wish we didn't have to worry about security so much. >> we were not subjected to a daily diet of second guessing and cynicism about the motives and actions of every leader and institution. >> talking about growing up in the 1950s and even early 1960s. we could look at president eisenhower and be so proud that

he was our president. there was little some standard that would come and go and but it wasn't a steady diet of second guessing. we could hear from the president and he could make his statements and we could judge for ourselves much of what we do on c-span and we didn't have two seconds of the president and 20 minutes of analysis by other people. i think as many political scientists are now pointing out that thomas patterson and his book out of order what we have done to ourselves by the way we cover leaders has been a great disservice to democracy. ... it's very difficult to accept people who cherished democracy, the primary decision makers, the

people they vote for or see on television, we are only human. by any standard, american politics, if you go back and look to the generations, the millennia, honest and hard-working, of course. you have to be skeptical and ask questions but if you do to the exclusion of the people running for office and constantly emigrating people, i don't think it's good for the long-term prospects of our democracy. >> a lot of people say we became cynical after vietnam and then after watergate. you're in the middle of that. >> i was. i also think in the last war, everything was not watergate. maybe it just takes a while for

people to catch up with what's currently going on for many changes are made because of those experiences. >> i can ask you this because -- how are you on the watergate committee? >> public 26 -- 27. >> you graduated? >> right. i was with four other graduates recommended for the job. we worked 18 -- 20 hours a day. the other view were turning to the staff. >> what you remember about them? >> i remember how careful investigation was john made it clear that nobody could have any notions, no one was to draw any conclusions but no one was to

talk to the press. got very upset with me one day because what if i lawyer on a matter on the hearing and that the end, they asked me a question, he just thought needed to be removed from the political give and take and i think that's how it was done. i'm very regretful we've not followed that kind of thoughtful nonpartisan about the play approach. >> you think it's a different atmosphere today? >> a very different atmosphere. >> in what way? >> the stakes have been raised on the partisanship, people who shoot to further aim, they make statements and judgments about other people, i think the press

has a vested interest in trying to stay ahead of whatever it is going on, nobody can say they were behind the curve even though week or two later, it turns out to be not very important at all. the nature of press coverage plus the spirit of the partisanship, i understand ballots occurred in a mutual relationship, it's not one side or another fault, i wouldn't say that. the decibel levels on both sides, i just don't think it's good. it not good for the country, people accuse each other of -- >> results of people who are republican back then and wanted to get back, not personally involved but want to get that from the other side? >> it is unfortunate,.

>> back to a more mundane issue. a passion for food. [laughter] a national obsession so there is guilt, why did you write about that? >> i wrote about it because my advocacy work in the past, i focused on hungry children and the need for other programs like that but our biggest problem n now, even though we still have hungry children, one in 12 but the much bigger problem is obesity among children. it's a combination of eating too much, exercising too little. television is part of the reason for that and the fear of parents letting children want to play. the fact that they don't have physical education will everyday any longer. i thought about that.

from my own experience, my own battles with food the way i was raised, we ate an enormous amount of food. huge slabs of meat, great big helpings of potatoes and bread but we were active as children, playing all the time. we were on our bikes so kids today don't have those opportunities. >> what do the three of you do today about exercise? >> hasn't as often but he has been working out and he'll get back to running again. chelsea is very good, she takes ballet everyday. i come and go. i have months when flight good and other funds where i'm not. i use the west as an excuse, it's either too hot or too cold. >> when you travel, how do you

prevent gaining weight from bad food? >> tried to stay away from it. part of my problem is that when you travel a lot and work long hours, you get exhausted. so i tried to keep away from. >> is not in the book although you allude to the discussion about healthcare, i had people over the weekend visiting saying missus clinton has been modestly successful in the healthcare issue without succeeding in getting a law passed. have you seen these stories? >> we are trying to do with healthcare in part understood because it was more government take over. a different approach, managed competition. i think we do have some positive results because of the competition.

you seem cost go down for many employers who provide health insurance for their employees, loosing necessary hard decisions being made about services that could or should be offered. as in other side, we now have more people without insurance, up to 33 million working people, that doesn't count people on medicare or medicaid. you have 33 million in addition at risk because they are uninsured. we've also seen the results of competition without any regulation. many of the managed competition, insurance companies are making very tough decisions. it's good news, bad news story. the focus on competition on these results, i believe unchecked competition in healthcare is and will lead to further results that will affect all of us.

>> if you were sitting in my chair, what questions would you ask? >> one thing i would probably ask, a writer because i wanted to get these ideas out and it's been well received, i'm grateful people have been buying it but i would like it to be part of a broader conversation and i'd like it to be something people talk about, the book necessarily but the ideas that are part of this conversation, about what people can do in their own times in neighborhoods and churches and everywhere else. i wish the message of the book would be that it not just parents that have been through responsible to her children, it is all of us. my life will be affected by people who make decisions about our economy, the safety of our food and all kinds of things.

>> does she go to college? >> it's a very sore subject. people have asked, the past couple months been hard for you? husband and i went to college, we've had to face up to the fact that she'll be gone in a year or so that's not pleasant enough as she any idea what she wants to be? >> for a long time wanted to be a doctor, a pediatrician. especially t and gerontology. [laughter] >> take care of her mother and father. here's what the book looks like, it's called it takes a village in the author's hillary clinton. thank you for joining us. >> thank you.

>> saturday evenings this summer, but tv is opening up our archives and will binge watch a well known author. our focus tonight is a little different, focusing on former first lady's who were also authors. up next, laura bush. first lady from 2001 to 2009, a former library and during her time in the white house much he advocated for literacy cofounded

the national book festival, which is observing 20th anniversary fall. now from 2010, she discusses her memoir spoken from the heart. >> good evening, everyone. i'm the secretary for history art and culture for the smithsonian institution. it is my pleasure to welcome all of you, and it really is all of you, a nice crowd here tonight. this program this evening, former first lady of the united states, laura bush on the publication of her memoir, laura bush, spoken from the heart. the new york times called it deeply felt, keenly observed account, adding missus bush conjures her hometown with enormous detail, lyricism and feeling. tonight, missus bush will be interviewed by robert and we are all delighted to welcome her back to us missiles in

smithsonian event. copies of her, which she has already signed are available in the lobby. because of her schedule, they will not be any personalization of the books after the program. before we begin, i'd like to remind all of you to have your cell phones -- [no audio] additionally, no photos are allowed during the program from cell phone cameras or any other camera. we appreciate your cooperation on both of these. as i've mentioned, we are pleased to have robert here in conversation with missus bush. a senior news analyst for npr news, she was a congressional correspondent for more than ten years. additionally, a political commentator for abc news. we are countless awards for more than 40 years in broadcasting,

she's been inducted into the broadcasting and cable hall of fame. the american women in radio and television cited her as one of the greatest women in history. the author of several books including we are our mother's daughters. relationship throughout america and certainly an appropriate topic for tonight program. i can tell how proud i am to have worked her mom, she's here with us today. a member of congress, or of congress in favor of the estonian board of regents and a promoter and supporter of america's cultural heritage, both in new orleans and louisiana, across the nation, welcome. [applause]

is a distinct honor and privilege to introduce ms. laura bush. since her eight years, first lady of the united states, missus bush has continued active involvement in key issues including education, healthcare and human rights. she recently hosted a global conference on the needs of women at the newly opened george w. bush institute in dallas where she directs her global and women's initiative missus bush early career as a teacher and librarian, uncritically because of my own life as a teacher, her early career library has helped shape lifelong interest in literacy and education. during her tenure in the white house, she focused on childhood development and is an enthusiastic proponent of teacher improvement programs such as teach for america, a new teacher project trips for teachers. as first lady, missus bush helped launch the popular congress first national book festival in 2001, which

continues every year end attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the mall every september. in 2006, she took a passion global, hosting leaders from 40 nations for a special summit to address the worldwide literacy crisis. nearly three quarters of a building adult cannot read. she's currently on right ambassador for the un literacy decade and in 2005, she made a historic trip visiting the newly opened women's teacher training institute as she helped establish. his first lady, she made three trips, five chapter she championed the aids treatment and the ratification and visited the border. she's been an advocate for women's and human rights around the globe. many other accomplishments, missus bush has been an active participant campaigns to raise awareness for breast cancer and heart disease both in the u.s. and around the world.

missus bush is a great friend to the smithsonian, she fought off a variety of collections in the white house, hosted events in the american art museum, using it as an venue and thinking the arts community. she dedicated her portrait at the national portrait gallery took friends on loki trips for american history and national design began in new york. she hosted the design awards the white house and memorable for me, she graciously loaned the white house copy of the gettysburg address, which usually resides in the lincoln bedroom in the white house, the smithsonian for the opening of the american history museum so millions of americans have access to that wonderful document. now she serves on the board of the national museum of african-american history and culture, scheduled to open in

2015. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome ms. roberts and ms. laura bush. [applause] [applause] >> thank you all. thanks so much. thanks, everybody. [applause] >> thank you all. [applause] thank you. thank you very much. i didn't really love to visit all the smithsonian resumes and institutions, they were our neighborhood museums and they are so wonderful, a huge asset to the united states so thrilled to be here at the invitation of the smithsonian institution. and happy to be in washington

and see so many friends, thank you all very much for coming. a lot of people who worked in the administration, i think there volunteers that have volunteered and open all those letters help us answer those letters. thank you all for everything you did, for all the years we've lived here, thank you so much for coming out to welcome me, i'm thrilled to be back and to see all of you. you may not know i have lived in washington twice before george and i moved in the white house. george and i lived in washington in 1987 and 88, george was working on his dad's campaign, my first day in washington was during the summer of 1969 when one of my good friends from southern methodist university and i headed east to see what life outside texas would be li

like. [laughter] we ended up in washington, she got a job at the department store and i decided to try my luck at getting the job on capitol hill. i set up an interview with congressman george, the congressman for my home district and he represented midland, the district for as long as the district has been a district. he been there almost 35 years. the congressman invited me for an interview, he looked over my resume and he asked if i could type or take shorthand? [laughter] i said no. [laughter] i had taken a quick course of typing in summer school and high school but i hadn't really paid attention. congressman asked me if he thought my father -- if i

thought my father would consider sending to secretary or school. [laughter] i thought about what my father had just spent to send me to smu and i said no again. [laughter] congressman gently suggested that being able to type or take shorthand, i wasn't qualified for a position in his office. [laughter] had i been a typist, in the summer of 1969, i might consider it will have become a congressional staff or a group of students in. instead, i returned to texas and public school teaching and was very happy. had i stayed in washington, i might never have met george w. bush. so in retrospect, i am grateful i was turned down by capitol hill. [laughter] [applause]

[applause] i'd like to take a few lives to share with you something from my book about how george and i met in midland, texas and how we both, without realizing it, began our journey to washington d.c. for at least a year, my friends husband had been telling me he wanted to introduce me to one of his friends. he got to meet high school and lived with me in houston. after spending a few years in san francisco, and come home to live in the joey was working in his dad's business in his childhood friend, george bush was working as oil landmen, scouring courthouse records for land that might be for drilling wells. joey talked to george every time i stopped by to visit. it was in no rush, i had a vague

memory of george from the seventh grade, almost 20 years before. [laughter] i knew his dad had run for senate and lost in the 1970 when i first moved to houston and i assumed george would be very interested in politics. while i was nuts. it was late july, one of those high heat days when come dusk, the son wrote, left behind and exhausted world. i put on a blue sundress, drove the car around the corner and walked to the door of jan and joey's townhouse. even the roof was a cedar shake brown. the cicadas were droning and overlaying their vibrating wings was the steady air conditioners to keep the houses cool joey is at the grill not some elaborate

party, the floor of it. jan, joey, george and me sitting out back, eating in progress. we laughed and talked until it was nearly midnight. the next day, the phone rang. it is george saying, let's play miniature golf. so we did with dan and joey as our chaperones. [laughter] the miniature golf course is one of the prettiest places in midland, it was built among forest old elm trees which had grown tall and graceful, even in the west texas ground. we played golf under the stars and left again. then i went back to austin and george started their scene on the weekend, sometimes on friday night, or he would drive but he came every weekend, except for the very end of august when he left for maine to see his family. he loves to tell the story, he went exactly one day that summer. when he called my apartment, she

said some guy answered and he flew right back down. [laughter] returned and worked all through september. by the end george asked me to marry him. we've been dating only six or seven weeks but our childhoods overlapped so completely in our world for so intertwined, is as if we've known each other for normal lives. eleven he makes me laugh and his steadfastness. i knew in my heart he was the one. i looked at him and said yes. that sunday night when george arrived in midland, headed to speak to my parents. a week later, early on a sunday morning, and i drove to houston to meet his parents. he introduced me with the news, we were getting married.

[laughter] after lunch at the bushes home, george's dad pulled out the calendar and looked over each weekend is full and in a few minutes, we picked a wedding date. member for, 1977, one day after my birthday and one day before the anniversary of that awful accident and only about three weeks away. there was no time even to order printed wedding invitation. my mother wrote and addressed all invitations by hand. far more nervous than either the bride or groom were jan and joey, o'neill. they dated for years before they got married. neither of them drained the invitation to dinner with cletus to the altar in three months. [laughter] perhaps it wouldn't have if joey had introduced us when we were growing up in midland or when

george and i lived on the opposite sides in houston or almost any other moment prior to that night. at that particular moment, on that warm sunday night, both of us were hoping to find someone, who are not looking for someone to date but for someone with whom to share life, for the rest of our lives. we both wanted children, we were ready to build an enduring future. social facts of our flesh we went to dinner that night. with the right timing for both of us. of course, not everyone in midland agreed. as i was packing to leave austin, reagan and billy were selling their house. a week before the wedding, a friend of mine came to see megan and billy's house. she was thinking of buying it for her daughter. she didn't recognize megan but

megan recognized her and said, we are going to be in midland next weekend, we are going to line george's wedding and without hesitation, this woman said to megan, yes, you imagine the most eligible bachelor in midland nearing the old maid of midland? [laughter] reagan was speechless. but i thought it was funny. after all, i am four months into days less than george. the movers voted up my few things. after the last box, my cat and i began drive that i've never quite imagined making. back to live in midland. right outside of san angelo, i came upon a few scattered trees line the edge of the road. now on the verge of november, the frost already settled on the land the leaves have fallen and blown away. branches stood dark and empty

against the sky. suddenly, someone get tree, a great mass of wind birds lifted up, feathers posting, air swirling as they rose. i slowed and watched in silence as they beat their migratory way south, then glanced back at the unremarkable trees it extended its branches and refuge. the site was like a beautiful wedding guest on the long ride toward home. we were married on a saturday morning of the first methodist church in midland, the church had gone to all my childhood where i was baptized as a baby, i learned to sing in the choir and where my mother still went every sunday. methodist weddings nice. there were no bridesmaids to add a few extra minutes as they

walked down the aisle, it was perfect for the old maid in the eligible bachelor. [laughter] the rehearsal dinner held the night before and the windowless basement ballroom of the new hotel george bush hosted it in the menu was chicken and rice. when dinner was served, my mother lunch, our wedding reception was to be a post- ceremony luncheon at the midland racket club the next day and mother and caterer settled on chicken and rice. [laughter] leather bar had never thought to compare menus. [laughter] the next morning, she called the caterer to see if something could be changed. pasta instead of rice, anything but the meal was already in motion so our guests to can erase all over again. the morning after my 31st birthday when george stood up to

give his toast, he wept. george and his father are sentimental men. in years to come, to others but obscure the depths of their caring how much and how deeply their hearts open. george bush didn't even try to give a toast. bar spoke to the family. [laughter] that morning, the stained-glass windows sparkled with light, casting pretty patterns over the simple wooden p-uppercase-letter was. it was exactly 31 steps down the aisle into the rest of my life. [applause]

>> thank you all. >> thank you so much. >> as you know, i should real -- [applause] i have admired your work but this book is a delightful book. >> one of the nice things is it gives a couple things that i wanted to talk to you about anyway, when is the style. you are doing first leader. as i was reading your

description of texas in your childhood where you are there in the open plains in midland, was there somebody you had in mind? >> somebody specific but i did want it to be a literary memoir. i do love to read, especially literature. so i did want this to be that way. there is not a specific style but i wanted to be able to paint the pictures that i thought of. >> and you did. i do like plain, straight writing. that's what appeals to me. the kind that is just straight.

it was so plain. >> in addition to talking about meeting your husband, reagan was a good friend. >> it struck me the first time, from your childhood, you've remained close friends. how important has that been to your life? >> all of our friends were very big supports and politics. reagan was in the second grade with george. i met him in the fourth grade. her mother, this is in the book, married seven times. [laughter] married to three different men. [laughter] but she went to another house

and reagan lived somewhere in another school district so the first couple of years, she transferred over, which is where i went. i'm very fortunate, georgia had this long history of friendship with all of us friends, the women in the national park, every year since then. george loves to tell the story, the first time they came up he took them to the oval office and they say can't believe i'm here. [laughter] and they would look at him. [laughter]

along history of friendship like that, noticed our whole life, they know everything about us. friends long before politics and there is emotional support and those kinds of friendships. >> my mother's mother married a few times and her philosophy was life is all one big mistake. when you marry, you have to date the man who are married to. [laughter] you talk about friends and records and you have written about that the book. >> i did write about that they had to.

in my life and also all of our friends because he did reagan and he was one of my best friends. and i talked for years and it was a terrible tragedy of not seeing in the dark country road and just that time, a very odd chance of coincidence, i guess. he happened to be coming from the other way and i didn't know, obviously, that i hit his car when i got out of the car and my friend was with me in the car, she is able to get out and i walked to the side and when i

got out, had a broken ankle but i didn't know it for a few days. another part came up and the man got out of the car and went to the person who is flying, i think that's the person's father on the ground and i said no, it couldn't be. that is richard. then we had a cloth draped separating us, judy and i had very minor injuries so no one was there with us and then i heard ms. douglas crying on the other side of the curtain. then when i got home -- [inaudible] it was a huge tragedy and it was

a very hard lesson to learn, i learned early, things happen in the world, you cause things to happen if you could take it back this never anything you can do about it it's just a fact. you just have to accept it with whatever grace you can accept it with. >> you hadn't talked about until now. >> no, i had, i was asked when it came out in the newspapers, i was asked about it several times, i read an article for o magazine right after we moved to the white house she asked me about it. i wasn't asked often so i never really talked about it. people knew because i would get letters from family members of someone, someone was involved in a car accident and there was a

death. it asked me to write to them, to the young person for encouragement. so i did of course and i would always suggest to get some counseling, they talk to a pastor, get a counselor or find some sort of help, i didn't do that. no one ever suggested that at the time. reagan and i talked about it but it's just something you just swallowed didn't talk about. >> but the whole town knew. >> of course. all of my friends knew. >> did that in some way, help when you met george bush that you he knew and you didn't have to talk about it? >> he knew, i wanted him to know so we did talk about it. i did know he is going to run for office but i wanted him to know in case it ever, in some way, affect his political run.

>> it was very important. >> supporters your daughter married someone they just met. [laughter] >> i would think it's very reckless. [laughter] but i will say my parents were thrilled, they were glad i found someone and they were hoping for grandchildren. [laughter] i was 31 the night before we got married so i think they were really happy about it. [laughter] we had had the same background, we've grown up in the same town, just blocks from each other but we lived in the same apartment complex in houston without ever running into each other. so there weren't any surprises really. from either one of us.

>> ever? >> mother wasn't something in our background the other didn't know about. [laughter] >> many of you got home and getting married. [laughter] >> is running for congress -- [laughter] >> he told you where to sit on the subway at the capital. [laughter] anyway, he was retiring in 1978 george thought what the heck, why not try to run for it? i say it was only held by congressman for as long as the district had been a district. we traveled up and down the

panhandle of texas, is a big district. the big town and there were two oil towns and the rest was farming. cotton farming. i'm not sure this is different but i remember you telling a story once about my he asked about a speech and you always said the speeches were terrific but you decided to give a critique. >> one time running for congre congress, george's mother gave advice and she said don't criticize george's speeches. she said she criticized her speech and he had letters think is the best thing ever.

[laughter] soberly took it to heart the didn't ever criticize him one time we were driving home, just driving into our driveway after campaign event george said tell me the truth, how is my speech? i said well, it was a very good. [laughter] he drove into the garage while. [laughter] [laughter] he was never want to take criticism well. >> i want to go back to your childhood but because you write about it so interestingly, your father coming home from the war, concentration camp, why? why did he do that? >> my dad's company, 104th infantry the braided one of the concentration camps he came home with a little photographs that

would have been in world war ii and i think there were about 5000 dead when they liberated. they wept when they found this. my dad never really talked about, we have these photographs and every once in a while, we look at them he didn't really talk about it. mother tells me one story he did tell her and it was he was sort of impressed with the army nurse. he remembered an army nurse standing with a shovel and handing it to one of the german was there and he said he set himself up and said i'm an

officer she took the shovel and hit him across the bottom and he did. [laughter] later, many years later, when i was in prague for nato meeting, i was seated next to a holocaust survivor and i told him my dad company liberated there and he said he'd been in a concentration camp and i said my dad never talked about it and he said i never tell my children about it either. he thought, like i thought he was just too terrible to tell, he just couldn't admit to your own children that mankind could be that cruel. he held onto those pictures, we always kept those pictures. >> what was your reaction when you are about the holocaust?

>> it's so unbelievable. it's terrible to hear about. it really is. crazy. it just happened that went to the capital, the holocaust the first year, george was president and mother happened to be there, she'd come home with me after the easter break and were sitting together ever been to the date of remembrance, go sometimes because it's very meaningful. the soldiers march in with the flags of all the american companies that liberated concentration camps and we didn't know, we hadn't been there for that we see these flags coming in and rethinking from what is that companies like look like? we couldn't remember the camp by.

the timberwolf life and father and i were bursting into tears to see that flag go by. >> did you always know you had the letters? >> a new mother had the letters, when i started to work on the book, i went to midland and drove around again and look at the houses. i go to midland often because my mother lives there but i don't always drive around and look at the houses my daddy built of the houses we lived in and because he was a homebuilder, every time you ♪ ♪ opened a new addition, he built a new house for us so we lived in several houses. george and i there but then i read the letters and i had not read them. i know she always had the letters, they were newly married and then he was shipped

overseas. i always felt she didn't want me to read them, there's something about them was personal. and i read some of them. they were private and personal and i did feel a little black but it was fun. [laughter] is fun and interesting thinking of them in love and separated by the were. >> then your mother lost three of the babies which was a great tragedy in her life and when you were pregnant your friend. >> right. mother lost three babies after me. that was my first memory, looking through the glass at the nursery in midland and i didn't see -- i don't remember seeing a baby, i just remember thinking

that's where my baby was, that little baby was. i was very aware this was a big disappointment of their life, they didn't get to keep the three babies and is a family of four children instead of an only child. not just one but four children. so i was sad about it, too and i was always my wish upon a star, to have a brother or sister. >> have this wonderful picture of you, everyone, get the book if you don't have it. >> i'm standing for the photo with the cake and bent over to buy into it. then when we removed the cake, they looked the table. [laughter] i think they've never had sugar. i know they hadn't. [laughter] their first birthday. >> it's always good to turn one.

[laughter] you had to go to dallas. >> i struggled to get pregnant and finally when i did, i was thrilled when i found out there were two babies because i was hoping my children would have a sister or brother and they got to have each other which was great but it was a high risk pregnancy, i was 35, it was a twin pregnancy so close to the end of the pregnancy, preeclampsia and was sent to dallas where there was in intensive care nursery because i thought the babies would need in intensive care which, they didn't really. they were five -- four and four pounds 12 ounces which is big for what they were.

>> you got involved in the 1980 campaign and suddenly his father is vice president. you talk about celebrity by association. i love that term. suddenly you are somebody. >> that's right. in midland. [laughter] i be working in the yard, thank you very much. i would see cars drive by slowly and you could tell their friends from out of town so they were driving by. [laughter] the vice president's son's house. [laughter] then when he ran for president, we all moved up here. >> we moved here in 1987 to work on mr. bush's campaign, it was

after the price of oil had fallen so much again, it was a oil business so when the price of oil was hi, everybody was high cotton, high oil when it went down, everyone would go through a bust and there was one shortly before that so george was able to move up here and we worked on the campaign. that was really fun and it was the first time in the ten years george and i was married letters with his brother. every other time, in maine when all of the other kids were there, and the other grandchildren with her, when she was highly stressed with all that. >> i love that.

>> bring about when things get really tense, grab a bottle of aspirin and do what it says on the bottle, take two and keep away from children. [laughter] [laughter] that year, running for president, they were gone of course during the week that they made a rule to be home on sundays together, we had hamburger lunch which was there family tradition, every sunday. i talked to them for the first time really and also, she got to know me. she had five children. i expected her to welcome me with open arms like mother love george because that's the only other world. but then we really got to know each other and love each other and love the same things. she loved to read in that year,

the year end a half we lived here, we get up in the morning on a saturday morning and read a review of the show was here at the smithsonian somewhere else and she called me and we jump in the car because she was the vice president's wife, we could get in 30 minutes early but it was a wonderful chance for george and me both to have this relationship with the parents as adults. we were adults. they were, too. they babysat for barbara and jenna even though they were running for president at the time. i'm so grateful to have that chance to live in the same town because it made a huge difference in our relationship at the end of the presidency you are seeing things on television and reading things about things that weren't true and it was his characterizations of them. then your husband goes and runs for governor.

[laughter] were you distressed. >> not really. we had that one race for congress, the politics is a family business. [laughter] when you have a family member in politics and everyone is in it together and you have opponents, it doesn't have to be a chiller you're really in it together. that year george and i traveled in west texas when he ran for congress was really great, we did everything together, so when he decided to run for governor, i was fine with that. i had a really good time. if you run win, that's great. if you lose, life goes on. it's not the end of your life if you lose a political race.

and i knew that. so when george wanted to run for governor, used to say you think george will run again for office? i used to kind of joke and say yeah, j yeah, maybe when we are 50. he was 50, it was a long time away. [laughter] but that was my hesitation when he wanted to run for president, running for governor, that is a big job, the media and scrutiny and criticism and attacks are not near what they are when you run for president. >> and you knew that most people really are taken by surprise, the fact you been involved in those campaigns. >> we really know it because especially in the 92 campaign, but in the 88 campaign as well. >> after your husband was elected governor, your father got sick and you saw your mother

in the role of caretaker. i wondered how you reacted to that as being distant from her and seeing her taking on that role. >> that was hard for me. my father called timers and slowly the old-timers progressed and he got worse and worse, he didn't ever get so bad that he didn't know me but on the last -- on the last thanksgiving, which was after george was elected government but before the inauguration, we lived in midland and spent that thanksgiving with them and that he said, is that over there? [laughter] i said that's my husband, george bush. he said you married george bush? i said yes. [laughter] said, i think i'll ask you for a loan. [laughter]

then he laughed. >> he started a few things in texas, thankfully were here. >> i think it's now in its 50th or 60th year. it's hugely successful, it's very popular with authors. it's really fun. it is held inside the texas capital building and the only way we got to do that was because george was governor and the speaker of the house, as of the texas house is the group that oversees the capital building they don't let anyone else meet in the texas capital and of course i understand that but they still allowed us to have the book festival in the capital. one weekend a year, the texas capital turned over the literature. think that is pretty great. [laughter]

on the senate floor and the house for the auditorium, there are a lot of venues about the authors will draw big crowds in the committee hearing room in its been very successful. ... you also got involved with arts and education and family and protective services and you came here as first lady and immediately worked together with the national book festival which

thankfully we still have going and you wrote, got very involved in the literature. you have those wonderful readings at the white house and early childhood education , all the things you have learned a great deal about while you were in texas. you started to concentrate on as first lady and of course we're at the capital on september 11 2000 and ready to testify before the senate education committee on early childhood education. >> i got in my car that morning and i'm going to brief the senate education committee on early childhood education so i didn't have the tv on that morning. i was looking at my breathing and i was very nervous . this was the first year that george was president in 2001. so just as i was getting in

the car the secret service agent leaned over to me and said a plane has just flown into the world trade center and i was getting in the car with margaret spellings and andy voss who was my chief of staff at the time and we had no idea what would transpire and we got in the car and went on to the capital we assumed that it was just some weird accident. some terrible accident that a plane had flown into the trade center. on the way to the capital we get this message about the second plane so we know then that it's a terrorist attack. but i go on and go to senator kennedy's office, he's waiting for me when i get out of the car and we go to his office and he starts to give me a tour of his office. he shows me all his mementos on his wall including a letter from his brother jack, jack had written to their mother when they were little and had written that teddy was getting fat . and he was still amused after all these years . letter. but the whole time he kept up

this small talk and i thought about it over and over and wondered if that was a defense mechanism for himself because he had so many shocks in his own life that he just kept up this small talk so that we didn't start to talk about it. what had happened and what this meant for all of us. or if he thought i wouldfall apart . and so he was just trying to keep everything you know, in this sort of pleasant smalltalk way. we did go out, senator judd gregg i understand is one of our closest friends and had been at the ranch that summer because he was the one whohad played al gore for the debate prep . >> son of a senator. >> exactly. so judd joined us and he and i would just sort of look at

each other as we were looking over at senator kennedy's shoulder to look at the television, the small television that was back in the corner of the office and we were sick. we felt sick. i thought judd looks sick, i thought he felt i looked sick to and really i think it was sort of a blessing that senator kennedy kept up this smalltalk because it gave us the way to try to process what we were seeing and what it meant. and then the three of us went out and spoke to the press and said that we were postponing the briefing. i mean, already it was in defiance of the terrorists, we weren't going to cancel the briefing but it was just going to be postponed and as we finished just saying we were postponing themeeting , the briefing, lawrence mcclellan from usa today asked me he said mrs. bush, what do we say to the children?

that's when i got the idea of what do we say to the children? and i said then that to assure the children that they are safe and turn off the television and don't let them watch over and overthose buildings falling . but then it really gave me a direction of what i did in the days that followed including the letters i wrote two high school students and then to younger, another letter for younger students about what had happened and what they could do for each other and how we needed to take care of each other at a time like this but it also lead you to your great passion for the women of afghanistan and you had been there three times. you've been to 70 countries as first lady and you are still working on thatissue . and said to continue to work on that issue. >> i will work on that forever and i think what happened was as everyone's

eyes turned towards the women of the united states were so shocked by the contrast to the lives of women in afghanistan and our life. we couldn't believe it. we couldn't imagine a government that would prevent girls from being educated. and immediately i heard from women all over the country who wanted to do something. there are unbelievable stories. one woman that i know all of her shell whose husband was the president of the university said she would lie in bed at night and think what can i do? what can i do to help women and one day it dawned on her she could write other presidents of the university and say and you give afghan young women. ships that include everything . so they can come over here and be educated and go back home and help build our country and she did and she had students still to this

day in a number of universities and i spoke to the first graduating class of afghan women at that university and her husband's university four years later. that's just one of so many different ways american women .they could mentor afghan women and help them in some way to make sure they could be able to one day enjoy the freedoms that we all enjoy. >> one of the reasons they even knew to do it was because you were out there advocating for them and right after the invasion you, were the first person other than a president to go to the microphone and for the presidents weekly radio address. you use it to defend the women of afghanistan and say women's rights are human rights . and they tell the story after that that someone didn't really understand it and i love the fact you told me at one point lady bird johnson said to you i have a podium and i'm going to use it.

>> i knew that, that was what lady bird johnson said and she did user podium, she really did. and speaking of lady bird johnson i always admired her so much she was a texas first lady. and what an impact she had on our country read was something i also was interested in primarily because my mother was a naturalist and interested in wildfires and native plants and lady bird, started the whole use in the landscape. they bloom on rock creek parkway and all those bluebonnets that are on the side in texas that i saw last week becausethey are blooming their . and towards the end of lady bird johnson's life linda rob her daughter called me and said that her mother was going to make one more trip to washington and she, linda knew that it would probably

be her last trip to washington and she wondered if she couldbring her to the white house and of course i was thrilled for her to come . she was in a wheelchair and by then she had had a stroke and she no longer spoke but she still had that wonderful twinkle in her eye. and very expressive movements so when she would see a painting or something that she would remember she put her hands together and gas and when we went to look at president johnson's portrait, she kind of put her arms out, it was great. it was really very sweet and i was so glad to have that chance to show her the white house and to walk around the white house with her and in fact i've read on the room where my ground floor, where a lot of the most recent portraits of the first ladies are in her portraits is over the fireplace there and she's wearing a yellow down and when we redid the room he had

adjusted the paint color in the room to be a yellow that looked like it was the color of the gown she waswearing . i was in texas when lyndon johnson died, at the university of texas in graduate school and lady bird and linda and lucy, his body lay in state at the lbj library that's their they stood and shook everyone's hand and i stood in line to walk through and pay my respects and to shake their hands never imagined i would ever meet them again. >> it's time for us to go to questions but i did want to ask one last thing of my own which is that you've seen these works for the afghan women and you did all these works on aids in africa and you then became a passionate advocate for freedom in burma. writing off heads and going to the white house briefing room and grabbing the microphone there the first time that had ever happened and calling for the overthrow of the regime of burma. it was not exactly sitting

and pouring tea. [applause] and i know that you're very gracious in this answer always about why people didn't understand how forceful you have been as the first lady and why they put you in some sort of sleep little wife category and i mean i'm not saying you're not . >> i think that happens everyone. >> i know you say that. >> it was the same with lady bird johnson. instead of being really a leader in the environmental movement, one of the founders of the us environmental movement she was, she was thought of as alovely little lady that likes flowers . i think it's just what happens and it's a shame really that somehow these

stereotypes start and our first ladies are seen as so flat and one-dimensional because they're always so much more complex and so much more interesting than those views of them and certainly barbara bush who was this nice grandmother and who instead is such a strong-willed and very fascinating woman. >> that was true for martha washington but i think her cat did her in. but i just wonder if you think it's because thank you, there's a press bias against the people didn't like your husband. >> that's part of it forsure, no doubt about that i think . i think that's part of it for sure but i hope and i think that maybe we are slowly moving away from that . >> all right, let's see. goodness, let's see if i can

see them. this is a good opportunity to talk about the institute. i was asking what are your products projects now that the book is completed. >> george and i are building the bush library and museum and institute at smu and we've already started the programming for the institute . which will be a policy institute. as george said where no longer into politics but we still want to work on policy and it will be focused on the four areas that we've spent the most time on which our human freedom, education , opportunity and compassion and so i've already hosted the usafghan women's council there . the new minister of women's affairs came from afghanistan area that we did video conferencing into afghanistan with the minister of education in and the us ambassador to afghanistan

area afghan ambassador to the united states was with us in dallas along with several afghan all right scholars. some other afghan women who are running products in afghanistan came at the new woman director, secretary general of unesco whose eight bulgarian came and that's great because theyare very active in the literacy . this us afghan women's council was focused on literacy for afghan women and girls so i wanted to keep working on. i hope the united states stand with afghanistan. it's really important. if we don't, i'm just afraid they will go back to what they were and it's really important especially for the women there. i met with this group of afghan parliamentarians, members of parliament women right before george and i left the white house and one of them said this is our only chance . and if we can't make it now, then you know, we won't be

able to so i hope that we will all do whatever we can to support the people of afghanistan. >> this is from lisa from humble texas. if you ever cook when you were in the white house? >> no. [applause] i haven't cooked for 15 years now i guess. he had a chef at the governor's mansion. wonderful chef at the white house and i never have been really a very good cook. i love to read cookbooks and i'm very interested in food and i love to eat. but i'm not a very good cook. >> if you could have taken one nonpersonal item from the white house back to texas what would you have wanted it to be? >> there's so many beautiful paintings. the white house has a really

magnificent art collection and i don't even know which one i would pick. there's so many that are wonderful. >> and you bought these african-american artists. >> we acquired a jacob lawrence painting just the most expensive acquisition the white house ever made. by far the most excited expensive item there, not really but that big george washington would be considered priceless as well as the painting of benjamin franklin in the green room but it's a beautiful painting of one of jacob lawrence's builder series and its men of all races building together. his belief that if we all work together, we can build our country and since my father was a builder, it had a special sort of personal memory to me there's something very tangible about being a builder and you have something tangible at the end . when i would drive around with my dad and he would say i felt that house and i don't that house , there's nothing very satisfying aboutthat .

>> as a military spouse i've always wondered you and your husband found time to visit our troops. now did you no longer doing first lady duties are you and your husband still involved and support the programs? god bless you and semper fi. >> that's so sweet, thankyou . [applause] we did visit the wounded warriors here at walter reed and then berg army medical center where the burn patients are. and san antonio often, whenever we could. and then we met of course the families, our members especially in the 2004 campaign and we go to big events and then after the big events were over, we have a big campaign rally and we would go backstage or in other rooms and meet the families from the that part

of the country where we were. and that is a brief that is very very difficult to share with or to see with these families and what i always saw was how the families of people who died both in september 11, those families that we met with after the terrorist attacks and then the families that had fallen after that. how they wanted you to know about their loved ones that they had lost and what they wanted to do was tell a story . in fact, one sister of someone who died in iraq had written a story that she read to george and me. about her brother. and there was something so moving about every one of those visits and about how precious our country is that

we are so fortunate to have men and women who volunteered to serve ourcountry like the men and women of the united states military do . >> absolutely. [applause] what advice would you give your daughter in finding a suitable husband. >> i'm still giving that advice to barbara . always i said you should look for somebody just like daddy. some people do that a little bit, both of you your girls girls are doing wonderful. >> thank you very much. jenna is a continuing correspondence on the today show and she's doing great . still teaching one day a week as a reading interventions teacher at their school in baltimore and barbara as found in a nonprofit called global health for if you're interested you can look on the web at gh for global health. gh core.org.

and she is placing recent college graduates in health clinics for the poor. right now she has fellows on the ground in rwanda, malawi, tanzania and in the united states in boston and newark and it's sort of the idea but behind teach for america but this is toregroup smart young college graduates to work in health clinics and their doing things like setting up the supply chain . one of her fellows did work for the gap and he ran a supply chain for the gap, for the ordering and supply chain so now for tanzania is setting up their supplychain for antiretrovirals for their drug ordering . so the people in the clinics that go on a rvs can keep up with their medications . so i'm very proud of both of them and they're doing great . >> there's also a question

about how your in-laws are doing. >> they're doing well to. they're in dallas in my backyard george, hosting the party, georges david sure barbara bush's assistant last summer in maine. and they're getting married. [applause] so tonight we're all posting the welcome to texas barbecue for the out-of-town guests . it's from that has to so a lot of maryland friends i think are there in the backyard right now . they're doing well enough to be able to fly from houston, go to this party,fly back home, fly back on saturday for the wedding and fly all the way up to maine .>> that's great. i think this is a good last question. and i actually love for you

to read just the end of your book because it's so beautiful but the question is what do you enjoy doing now that youcould not , did not do in the white house? it's probably a long list but also you write it so beautifully. >> this last one. >> talk us through the last paragraph. >> we have lived through four seasons now on ourranchland. a spring bloom of wildflower carpets and prickly pear . the baking heat of summer when the air shimmers and even that to cater wine slows to accommodate the stifling air. a fall of crisp morning can bring colors and in the winter when at night you can hear the howls of the coyote and the rest of the biting prairie wins . four seasons, hardly years let alone a lifetime. when i was born there was a blacksmith shop on one of midland's main streets. today our news is

disseminated via blog. but each morning when i watch the sun lit its self over our eastern shell cutting through the tree line and illuminating the general prairie grasses and the two young shade trees that are white house staff gave to us, i'm reminded of the joy to be found in the days coming. george will soon open his presidential library at southern methodist university in dallas or in the george w. bush institute is already functioning and as a part of that i'm pursuing many other coffers that were dear to me in the white house. i'm eager to continue to advocate for women's rights and women's health. through a special women's initiative i've begun working on new ways out the women of afghanistan in the middle east and to promote education and literacy for the millions for whom alphabets are a mystery and basic addition a complex puzzle. and through the institute we will help to promote basic human freedoms for these women and their families.

but as much as i treasure my public life i also treasure quiet of my private one. sometime during that first spring and summer back in texas i began to feel the buoyancy of my own newfound freedom. after nearly 8 years of hypervigilance, of watching for the next danger or tragedy that mightbe coming , i could at last exhale. i could simply be. when i raise my eyes to the sky it's to see the drift of the clouds that the brightness of the blue or the moon and the ever shifting arrangement of the stars . look up laura, i can still hear my mother say with a hint of off and wonder and i do. >> thank you so much, i really appreciate it.

thanks so much. >> watching tv on c-span two and tonight we're looking at books written by former first lady. of next is michelle obama. she was first lady from 2009 2017 and her memoir becoming was the best-selling book of 2018 and it still remains on bestseller lists today. according to the book publisher random house, becoming sold 10 million copies worldwide during its first six months of sale. the book was released in november 2018 but it was in june of that year that she preview the book in a talk with carla hayden, the library of congress this is from the american library association meeting in new orleans. >> and now the person you all came to see.

[applause] michelle le bon robinson obama. [applause] she is a lawyer, she is an author and she is the wife of the 44th president of the united states. barack obama. [applause] throughout her initiative as first lady she has become a role model for women and for girls. and an advocate for healthy families, servicemembers and their families, higher education and international adolescentgirls education . her much-anticipated memoir becoming will be published in

the us and canada on november 13, 2018 by crown , a division of penguinrandom house . and it will be released simultaneously in 24 languages. consider one of the most popular first ladies. [applause] mrs. obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her from her childhood on the south side of chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world's most famous address. warm, wise and revelatory , becoming is the deeply

personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations and whose story inspires us to do the same. we are also fortunate to have library of congress carla hayden hosting the conversation with mrs. obama today. as we know, hayden was nominated to this position of librarian of congress by president barack obama in february 2016 and her nomination was confirmed by the u.s. senate in july 2016. she was sworn in as the 14th library of congress in timber 2016. library of congress carla hayden and first lady mrs. obama come together now for an in-depth conversation around her forthcoming memoir becoming and the experiences that have impacted her life,

her family and her country. michelle obama. [applause] >> lot of librarians here. you guys looking good. >> hi carla. >> hi. >> how are you? >> i'm telling you, there have been many thrills to be the librarian hitting here with you is one of the most.

i'm getting a littlefrequent but i'm the interviewer . so i have to. >> you just have to remember our days back in chicago. i've known carla since i was a baby. a baby professional. you shouldn't be nervous. >> and what a professional you were though because the chicago public library, i came back from pittsburgh and the library was part of your portfolio. >> yes it was. >> it made such a difference to have somebody that understood libraries. read and everything in government like that. >> that was her. that wasn't shape. not at all, she was just making a point. >> because i was coming in from an academic teaching library of things . >> so we go way back. >> what i mentioned is you

like to read, it's been abig part of your family , reading . >> absolutely. we are readers, the obama's. and we started reading to the girls when they were babies, infants because as a little kid i love to read aloud i was one of those kids would set up a stuffed animals and the parties and read to them. and show them the pictures and then go back. i loved that act of reading aloud so when i have kids. i just became like my real babies i can reach you. so i read to them all the time all the time. i know every word of every doctor seuss anything. still my heart. and as the girls grew up we continue to incorporate books as a form of family activities as they got older, we started reading more complex books. together. so barack and amalia, read

all of the harry potter books aloud. from front to the back. and then she could see the movie afterthey read . so that was there father daughter ritual so and i stayed out because you know you want the father to have a thing that they do. so i don't know anything about harry potter because i wasn't even when you get involved in . so that's their thing. so when sasha got older, i read life of pi with her then we saw the movie. and we were big, comic family readers we love calvin and hobbes. we were a big calvin and hobbes family . so yes, reading was a part of the way we are kids to sleep at night you i felt that music, reading culture was an important part of their development .

because very early on. so we are big big readers. >> one of the images that i know when you were in the white house and there would be holiday time, you would be going and they would be going to the bookstore . >> yeah. >> getting books as gifts. >> that's the only place barack knew to go as president. he could go and he could get to the bookstore. those were the two things he felt comfortable doing outside of the white house but that was an annual ritual that he and the girls did to go to one of the bookstores for the holidays. and in chicago that the seventh street bookstore. you know that bookstore. that was our neighborhood store that we liked to go to. so yes, bookstores and libraries of course were big parts of my life very early on. i remember my first experience with going to the

library. i was 4 and it was like the first official time i got an iv. you felt like a big-time person getting something with your name on. and i remember knowing into the library in our neighborhood was three blocks from our house. and my mom was a housewife at the time, that's where she would take us and that was sort of my first major behavioral thing i could do was get my library card and stand like counter height watching them put me into the official files area i felt really important. i didn't know what to do with my library card was i didn't have a wallet or a purse. but i felt really special to have and we would go to the library. it was a community space and at all of you know the library, it's a major part of any community and that was the place for our family to go to get those early books,

dick and jane books. you go off into the children's corner with where the colorful titles were and i thought one day i graduated going upstairs where the books were darker and the jackets were maroon or blue. that's where the serious books work, upstairs. >> did you ever get to go? >> i got up there one day, i graduated. but then the library became work. research papers, the dewey decimal system. [cheering] only here at the library convention do we get i shout out for the dewey decimal system. only here. i love you all, i do. >> so you continued, you went to school, graduate school, all of that and then life even busier. how do you find time to read for pleasure? you know we all want to know,

did you get a chance toread anything for pleasure ? >> there were moments of escape. today however i'm spending most of my time selfishly focus on my book so that's what i'm reading. and it's almost ready. it's coming. i've been immersed in that process so this year has been a little tougher for me as i'm trying to stay in my voice. but when i do have time, i have one of my chief of staff melissa who by the way, she's more excited to behere and she was to meet bruce springsteen . melissa winter is my book recommender. she loves you all and i'm a loser here in this convention center tonight. she might leave me. she's been with me since the beginning of the campaign but she is my book the room and i usually read melissa tells me i should read social pass on,

you'll throw some books in my bag on a long trip. i have a very eclectic sort of reading list. i've read commonwealth. i love a good story that takes me outside of myself. i love everything's 80s has done. white teeth. i actually accidentally reread that. i read it maybe two years ago and then i was like, it was on my shelf and i thought that i read this? i started reading it and i thought i must have esp or something because i know what's going to happenon the next stage . this is how my life is that these past decades i would forget what i've read that i read it and i realized by the third chapter that i read it already i finished it. >> did you put it down? >> oh no, i love her storytelling and her characters . just finished reading exit west which was very powerful.

the nightingale i read just the other day. any shout outs for the nightingale. kim amanda, i love all of her stuff. so i mean, i love stories. i love to escape for a moment. i needed that escape over the past 10 years. i needed to get out of my own story and get into somebody else's story for a minute. >> were you able to do that? >> i couldn't read in the white house. times there was just too much going on and we were running so fast that whenever i got a chance to sit down and pick up a book, i would get maybe a sentence and i would fall asleep so i literally sitting down i don't know if i was napping or passed out. i couldn't tell the difference.

i'd wake up and it would be an hour and i think when i sleep that's how the white houseyears felt . so usually on a longer trip i could get into it was a hectic eight years. >> you said pick up a book and that implies a physical book. >> i'm not in the reader. ilike to have a book in my hand . i mean, even in my writing process i like to hold it. i can't really edit things on the computer well. i feel like i have to write down my thoughts. i can jot down things on an iphone but that's hard. i have to feel and i have to still be able to touch it. i'm old, sorry. so we still have a lot of books in our house and my husband who as you know is an

avid reader and still loves booksaround . everywhere we've gone is just boxes and boxes of books that i can't get rid of. he will not allow me to do it so we are still a household. we have books on shelves, lots of books on shelves. >> as a librarian i did some research and i understand that there's all library, you actually work in the library bindery? >> i work in a book bindery one summer. bob goldman's book bindery area and it was the summer before i went to college. at a friends mother thereand it was my first real job . before then i did the neighborhood jobs, babysitting. i had a family next to us that they paid me to do everything for them to babysit, train their dog, tutor piano.

the smiths, i love them and they got me through high school but then i graduatedto a job downtown, a book bindery downtown and the friends mother worked there . and my job entailed doing one thing thousand times every day all day over and over again. so i got to put the little metal thing in the whole and then pass the cardboard over to the guy that would slam it down. so my job was to take the metal thing, would in the whole and pass it and i was good with doing that for the first day even. i thought you know, i was aiming at finishing it. i thought there would be an end to it. that there would be thousands of them and i would prove to the bindery people that i was so fast i could completeit and i would be done and i realized it's never over . they just kept coming . these little pieces of cardboard in the little things that went on for weeks and weeks doing that same thing and i just thought my god, i'mready for college . i can dothis .

but it taught me great respect for the men and women who do that work every day. thankless work that makes it possible for us to have books and folders. i learned a work ethic at the bindery. but dozens of people in the plant came there and did the same job every day for years and years and years. they reminded me of my father , those blue-collar workers. they didn't look for passion in their jobs, they didn't have the luxury like we did to think about doing things they love you had to do the things that put food on the table so that was my first experience folder to shoulder with men and women who were making a living for their families. >> you mentioned your father so many times about his work and what for him to go to work and provide an things.

you saw it first. >> my father, fraser robinson . every value that i have any from my mother and father and wanting them to. as most people know my father was a blue-collar worker. work is a god his entire life, worked at the water filtration plant and my father had ms . contracted it at the prime of his life so i never knew him to be able to walk without the assistance of a cane but my father got up every day, it was a shift job so some days he was on days, some days on nights and some days it was on evenings so his schedule changed . and i remembered him putting on his white t-shirt and his blue button up uniform and getting his crutches and making his way out the back door to the car to go to his job without complaint, without regret because he was

proud that he had a job that allowed him to invest in his children. me and my brother. with that blue-collar salary he put two of us three through college and princeton at that. and he made sure that you know, we went to those schools long before they had you know, financial assistance that putyou completely through. we were still paying. my parents had to pay a portion of our tuition and he made sure our tuition was paid on time. we never were going to be late and not be able to register for our classes . so who i am today is so much because of my parents area and that hard work ethic and the values that your word is your bond. you do what you say you're going to do . you know, trust is important. honor, honesty. i saw my father behave in that way.

every single day with everyone, regardless of race or station in life. so that's who i think about when i write my book and i, how i carry myself in the world. i do what i think marion and fraser would expect me to do. i hope to be that personfor them . [applause] >> my mom is out here. >> is your mom out here? hey mom. >> sorry. so whenever anything happens, she says mrs. robinson, she's modeled after your mom and how your mom handled all of that. so your mom was right there with you. >> will you know, grandma. we couldn't have made it through the white house

without her . just having her . she had been helping me long before coming to the white house because the lock was always, barack was a state senator in the senate and those were jobs that had him away fromhome . usually most of theweek . and i still had a full-time job. i was at any point in time i was a professional with a big job of my own and we had two little kids. we could afford health and we had a couple of great babysitters, but the time i lost that one good babysitter andthat crushed me like nothing else . when she said she had to leave because she needed to make more money i thought i was losing an arm . barack was trying to control me and i said dude, get outof here. you are no help tome. i need globe, i don't need

you . you do nothing for me . but i remember that pain and i thought how can i go to work every day and not know that my kids are good, but there with somebody who loves them which is not to get on a soapbox which is why affordable childcare is so important because so many having access to that kind of security for all the families out there who don't have a choice, they have to go to work i know that that pain of what it feels like when you don't know your kids are good and good not just being safe but they're in a place where somebody loves them and is going to instill values in them and is going to read to them and take them to the library and is not going to just plop them in front of the tv. so i was about to quit working and i thought i just can't do it. i can't keep up the balance and who stepped in but my mom who was not yet retired. but she would come over at the crack of dawn, allow me

to go to the gym. she'd start getting the kids ready for school . she wake them up, fixed breakfast and i come back and grab them, she go to work . she get off, she come and pick them up. get them home. dinner and by that time i get home we had our routine down and there's just something about having your mom in that place where you know she will kill someone for her grandchildren. so she was a grandmother of the line. she was going to be the first one at the pickup line because she didn't want little babies walking around wondering where their ride was. so she would get there an hour before to be the first car so that she would see her babies and bring them here, bring them here. you don't, you can't pay for that area so we brought that energy with us to the white house and we needed it, that kind of no-nonsense solid,

tell it like it is, unimpressed with everything personality is marion robinson. she did not want anybody doing her laundry the white house. she could do her laundry just fine . she was notorious. we had housekeepers butlers and everything. at the white house she was like don't touch my underwear,i've got it . >> old for that. >> my moms will. >> she thought the girls to do their laundry so they had laundry duties grandma. >> so she really helped keep them grounded. >> she kept the wholewhite house grounded . she just kept, everybody used go up to her room. the butlers, the staff the inert with her. she shootingthe breeze getting some wisdom, telling their stories . at whole counseling session

of their in her sweet. of rooms but she kept us humble and focused on what was important and she was my sounding board. anytime anything crazy happened overthe course of the day , the first thing i would do to her suite of rooms floor above us. and i go there and sit on her couch. she have on msnbc or something she be trying not to talk about what was on the news on and so i let her know i was ready to talk about. she would do what she always did, sit there andlisten and go . and then what. >> because my mother was not going to solve your problems for you . she was going to listen and she would say what youthink about that ? and then you figure it out and by the time you leave figure out break. so so much of my ability to get out there again and again and to do with going up to the counseling room.

and sitting and having marion robinson go you'll be fine. just go on back down there. can't stop now. >> did he ever tell you you know you talk about that a lot, what are you going to do ? is he ever said you talkabout that a lot, what are you going to do about it . >> my mom, my mother and i write about this, about how i my mother, my parents had a really bad since of parenting at an early age. they taught us how to advocate for ourselves there early. so expectation was like you know how to fix your problems. you know what to do and when you teach kids at an early age that they have a voice that's worth listening to number one and that their opinions actually matter and that's what they get day in and day out at the dinner table, to adults listening intently and asking questions and encouraging kids to

contribute, that was our dinner tables. so that when you came home fromschool with a problem , you could it but you have to go back and solve it and so at 40, 50 years old my mother wasn't assuming all that she needed to solve any problems that i had as first lady read her expectations wereyou will do this and you will do this well because you know how to do it . there was never any need for her to even pretend like she had a to give me direction, she knew she had instill thosevalues in me when i was fourand five and seven . so she had done the work . >> what a blessing and you mentioned to you almost thought about quitting. because you did have and i don't know how many people realize what high-powered positions you had as a career woman. to balance that.

>> before i was first lady? oh yes. i had a job before iwas first lady, everyone . >> sometimes i get lost. i have big jobs, i was i'm smart, was, continue to be. that's why sometimes when i get the question how did you know what to do as first lady. it's like, okay. i went to princeton, harvard law. i was a good lawyer, worked in the city. worked with carla working on libraries. i worked at planning and economic development, ran a nonprofit . was vice president of the hospital. i don't know. maybe it was osmosis. i don't know. >> you were able to use some of those experiences. >> i didn't come to the decision of first lady ablank slate . and that's sort of what happens in society. you become a spouse all of a sudden area and i felt when i

talk about this in the book i felt myself becoming a spouse. i went from being an executive becoming a spouse. where the first thing people would talk about was what she was she wearing and it's like oh number people. you're not focusing on my shoes, right -mark i'm standing in front of military families. we are doing importantthings . but yes, there were moments in my profession because the burden of child-rearing fell on me as a woman. there was a part of my trajectory as my husband got faster and higher and louder, there was the challenge of how to when it sure my kids and i have a career. but that started very early, those doubts and those questions of how do you balance it all. is it fair that where on his rocketship ride when i have one too.

but that's something that i write about, that's what you learn, the balance and marriage and i tell young people this all the time particularly young women that what i've learned is that you can have it all but you usually can't have it all at the same time. and that's a myth that even having the expectation of having it all is a set up for young people, young couples , young men and women with children, the notion that you're not successful area if you don't have it all. it's hard to balance it all but i started to learn that life is long and there are trade-offs that you take and i think that the trade-off of stepping off of my path until at least i found childcare solution that works for me which was my mom, i entertained the notion of stepping off my track because i felt i have these two kids

and i brought them here. so my first priority is to makesure they are okay . i can't save the world if my household isn't solid. but the other thing i learned at that point in time when i was ready to jump off the professional track. i started not caring what people thought about me professionally. so i felt more freedom to ask for what i needed. i wound up staying in my career because i had an opportunity to become the vice president of community affairs at the university of chicago. the president was looking for a new person to have that division and i had just had sasha. she was four months old and i was like, not doing it. don't care don't care about work . but one of my good friends said you should interview because this guy is different

and i was like okay, i don't care. so i took, i was still breast-feeding so i had sasha and i said we're going to an interview, baby. going to see this man but we don't care, we're going and he needs to see all of me. i have a baby and thehusband was a us senator, whatever he was doing at the time . you want to hire this? let me tell you what it will take you how need this much money, i need flex ability, i laiddown a whole list of demands that were going to have him running in the other direction . because i really felt the freedom to be like, if you can do this, this and this and maybe i'll think about it . and he said yes to all of the whole list. of all the things i asked for . and i thought wow, i guess i have to try this now. but what i learned there is that women, as individuals you have to ask for what you need. and not assume that people are going to give you what

you need. and that taught me that i can define the terms of my professional life in a way that i didn't feel the freedom to do so i thought if i'm going to do this i'm going to do this in a way that provides balance and you know, i told folks don't expect me at every meeting, don't expect me to come to meetings where were not doing anything because i'm going to the halloween parade. and that's important. and i'm doing my job and i'm doing it well this meeting isn't necessary so i felt that freedom for the first time in my professional life to ask for what i need knowing that i was worthy of it. that i was valuable to them even in all my complicated miss. i was still giving them value but i had to learn to appreciate that value before i could ask for what i needed . >> and not be afraid. >> not be afraid at all. which is easier said than done so i understand.

it's not easy to tell somebody that you're worth a lot. especially for women. we have a hard time saying that about ourselves that i know my work and i can put a monetary number on it too. there is a value to it. and that's, those are the kind of things that i'm exploring in the book as well. and i'm not really just trying to pump the book these , i've been thinking about for the last year. i've been sort of reliving these things and figuring out what it's taught me you so i'm writing about all that. so i sound a little like therapy here. >> well, you're in it. and people and you're having the time to be able to step back because you mentioned going and going. you didn't really have time to reflect things were happening there was no time to reflect and eight years we did so much fast and we also knew we didn't have the

luxury to make mistakes. when you are the first, i mean, i live my life as the first, the only one at the table. and barack and i knew very early that we would be measured by a different yardstick. making mistakes was not an option for us. not that we didn't make mistakes . but we had to be good. we have to be outstanding at everything we did. andwhen you're operating at that level , and your trying to live up to the expectations of your ancestors, your fathers. when you're the first, you're the one that's laying the red carpet down forothers to follow . so yes, we were moving fast . i was starting an initiative almost every year during the eight years that i was there. and when istarted an initiative , there was a lot of work that went into it

forehand because coming to this work as a professional, i knew that strategic thinking about an initiative at. the fact the groundwork had to be done. when we started let's move before we even lost it, we spent a year meeting with every expert in the field. we had already developed partnerships before we had even announced it . we had focus groups. we were meeting with legislators and policymakers. so that when we stepped out into the arena, we knew what the pitfalls would be. we knew where the partnerships needed to be, we know where the holes were . it was work we were doing at the same time you're doing state visits and halloween parties and christmas decorations and so your life the swan with the paddling leg underneath. that was eight years of that.

oh yes, i realize there was time that something really major would happen at the beginning of the week. let's say you met the pope or something like that. >> let's just say that. this is the weird thing, that's kind of stuff we did. i'm pope, or hanging out with the queen. okay. :-), that was my life. that was, that could be inone week . a state visits, i first trip to africa that was my solo trip involved doing push-ups with bishop desmond tutu. literally, and i was like please get up. please please don't and he's like no, i'm going to do push-ups,come down . i just looked around and it's like if something happens to him it's not me . so i was doing push-ups with bishop to do. i gave a speech to a group of young african women leaders. i met nelson mandela.

we went on a safari. i went to botswana. that's like four days. all of that kind of stuff would happen in like four days. >> .. is never been to prague and my chief of staff said yes to have a night like i have never been to prague. we were back and forth and it took a picture of me in prague to say you are right.

i forgot all about that. it was there for two days. that's how, that's what the pages. they get crowded out at the next series of issues and demands. i don't know what the question was, how we got on this. [laughter] >> i forgot the question. >> when you think about all of that and you have the two little ones. >> say that again. >> the two little ones. >> oh my kids. i never forgot about them. >> when people are thinking about bad any advice for people? >> there's a lot of advice for balance. my balance is crazy. you are the first lady but you're also trying to go to the potlucks and the soccer game and they tell the story of how we

were at those parent teacher conferences. he is a big motorcade you know big, a lot of stuff and then with machine guns sniper gear they follow him everywhere. they are in trucks and leaning out looking at you like i will kill you because that's their job. by when they are at sidwell fourth. on the roof of the undergrad of a lemon tree school even malia was like dad, come on you know? so everybody was sort of okay when dad didn't go. politely going bad you don't have to come to the winter concert. it's okay. [laughter] we will take a picture. you can take a pass but i would be there and mom would need there and you are trying to be a normal parent in the midst of it when your kid is invited over for a sleepover and you have

explained we will need your social security number and there will be dogs sweeping your house and they will ask you if you have drugs and you'll have to tell them sorry julia's mom this is what it's like to have friends over but it will be fine. [laughter] but kids have fun. they learn how to look past all of that but you are balancing. least i was balancing not just the act of being a mother but inge first lady of the first daughters who had their own detail all the time. imagine trying to go to prom with eight men with guns and doing anything else that you are trying to do as a teenager with eight men with guns. barack and i were very happy about it. [laughter] [applause] but she even had to learn how to

discipline them without letting them think their agent told on them. all parents should understand this. i had to lie about where i got my information from. how did i know that no parent was at that party? julia's mom called me and told me. [laughter] not because i got a full report. it's like why are they so not to know, how do you think i knew? those are some of our parenting scenarios. so my goal is apparent was to try to make sure my kids had normalcy. that's a different set of challenges for the average parent. here's the thing that i learned, what are things i've learned living in the white house is that kids don't need that much. if they know you love them

unconditionally you can live in the white house, you can live in a little bitty apartment i grew up in. home is what you make of it. it said in a direction that you have everyday. [applause] it doesn't have to be perfect. it can be broken and funny and odd in many ways and our oddness was the level of dysfunction that most families will never experience but it was odd, and kids are resilient. they make it through which is why i think about all the kids that don't make it through because it takes a lot to break a kid you know? it takes a lot but there are so many broken kids which reminds us how bad we are doing. you have got to really do messed up stuff to kids to send him off. they have to come from her rogan is that is so off and we have to

see that in our children and understand when kids act out there's a reason for it. there's no such thing as bad kids. kids aren't worn bad. [applause] they are not. they are products of their situation. i have learned to give myself a break because my kids are loved and they are going to be fine. we mess up a lot of we make a lot of wrong calls as parents but we hold them to high standards as people. we don't measure them by things, degrees. we measure them for how they interact in the world and how do they treat their friends and how do they treat each other, things like kindness and compassion and empathy. those are the things that we have tried to teach them over these years. here's the thing kids watch what

you do, not what you say. the biggest thing that barack and i could ever do to be good parents to our kids is to be good people in the world for them to see every day. [applause] and that is true whether you are the president and the first lady or marion and fraser robinson. those standards, they don't know title, they don't know income. that's all the kids need and as you librarians know you work in the communities and you are seeing these kids coming to your doors and they come with such promise. they just want somebody to love them. they just want somebody to tell them that they are okay. that's one of the things i've tried to do as first lady and why i did so much with kids. ecocide hours thought this is the attraction that could change a kids life. this one hug, this one you are

worth it. [applause] you never know what can make a difference. [applause] >> now all of this you are giving to the community and giving to your children but you have also, i heard you say it but sometimes you have to put yourself first or not feel bad about taking care of yourself. >> oh yes, ladies. and men to but let's talk to the ladies a little bit on this one. because we do that. we put ourselves forth on our priority list after rebuy the else and then we are sort of, sometimes we aren't even on our own list at all is so filled with so many applications in the guilt that we have. this is nothing new but that

oxygen mask metaphor is real. you can't save someone if you are dying inside and that death can look like so many different things. it can be our sense of self-worth our own physical health, our mental well-being. all of that is if we let that go when we don't nurture it as women we are not good for anybody else. that is something that you have to practice and that is what i had to learn. i had to learn that because i didn't see that even in my mother. my mother was one of those who didn't do anything for herself. my mother died around here so she turned to green and i was like mom but screen it's not working. you don't know what you are doing. just go to the hairdresser. she was like it's fine, it's just green. >> i can relate to that area. >> i remember that area and i

grew up with women who didn't put themselves first. i thought i want to show my girl something else. i want them to see that being a good woman out here in the world means that you are smart, you are educated and yes you are gentle and kind and loving but you know you can do some push-ups you know. you were going to think about what you put into your body and what you eat. you're going to take time out for yourself and your relationship with your friends. i thought it was important for me and my girls to see me having strong friendships with women in my life. i have a posse of women who keep me sane. [applause] and the posse started early in my life. i always have a crew girls. i had my lunchtime girls.

we went over to each other's house at lunchtime in. school and played jackson complained about the teacher and analyze things and then we got ourselves together and we were fortified to go back in and finish the day. that was my early group. when my kids were young eyes had a strong and women are still a major part of my life and i could have gotten through those early years without them because we were all in our professional careers and some of us were married and some were single parents. some have husband to travel but every saturday we would get together and we started when the babies were in their cradles and we sat around each other in a circle so they could look at each other. [laughter] we talked about everything. are they walking yet and are they supposed to be in all those questions you have as a new mother and you don't know if you

were doing anything right it was just nice to be around a group of women who just like you they didn't know anything either. we were all messing up and it was okay. but we became our most important confidante as mothers raising kids and a all of these kids who have come up together are like cousins and they are out in the world created they have all done well which is another lesson that i've learned to give him parent all different kinds of ways. there's no one right way to do it. if you are love and you have consistency in the foundation of security they are going to be okay. we start to learn to let ourselves off the hook. then we started doing fun stuff together. we worked out together. the same woman i would do it boot camp with the camp david i want to thank these women who would come because i was trying to get everybody healthy. i bring them to camp david and we would do these intensive

workouts and i eliminated wine and stuff like that so everybody said they were coming in less i put wine back on the menu so i had to put wine back on the menu so i wouldn't lose my friends. we worked out three times a day and the navy could that kids would be like maam you're rolling on your push-ups. you are just so cute. don't, e-mail him. so we were getting healthy together and we started doing seminars. one of my friends was an ob gynecologist so we talk about and other things i can't talk about here. but that group, that was my crew throughout the white house years. that was part of that self-care that we all felt good about and we all got stronger over these eight years. we as women, this group of women we got physically and mentally

stronger together in ways that -- i love my husband. he is my best friend but they are more fun sometimes. don't tell him. he doesn't know that i have more fun with them sometimes but they gave me the kind of fortification that i needed and i encouraged young mothers to understand that we were not meant to parent in isolation. so many young parents to cousin of you know circumstances maybe they were transferred or living away from their homes for it i saw this and military families a young military mom would move away from her family cheat at kids and she'd be long and she'd be wondering why is this so hard i'd say because you are supposed to be doing this alone. children were meant to be raised in isolation. we need community. it does take a village. i encouraged young women to

build their village. if you aren't home with her mom and your aunt and your cousin wherever you are build that it was because that will be her celebration. he keeps you sane and it keeps you in balance in a way that i think we don't appreciate. >> what about fund collects. >> i just told you about the bunch of fun we had. >> the push-ups. >> the push-ups or fun car love. >> okay. [laughter] >> you wouldn't enjoy working out with me? >> i keep score. >> karla doesn't work out because she thinks there worse to be during a workout. one push-up for me and one for you. we had fun. we made sure we had fun and we wanted the white house to be a place of fun and particularly in tough times. we went through crises and

shootings. the amount of -- we had to help the country get through. you can't have all crisis. the country needs a time they need to celebrate in some way shape or form even in the darkest time. we had halloween at the white house and kids came and they were mostly military kids and their families. they come around the south lawn and the house was orange and everybody was in costume. they got to trick-or-treat at the white house. any major state where there was this state dinner or the rival we found a way to incorporate kids in matt. we had big act are forming in the evening. usually they'd agreed to do a

separate performance or workshop with young kids. we fly them in from all over the country and there were kids getting different experiences. so kids sat down and talked to every major star that came to the white house. we have the whole cast of hamilton come back and perform. [applause] and it was a very full circle moment for me because we first met lin-manuel when the first cultural event we did at the white house was the spoken word and rap for those of you who don't know, poetry. a cool poetry. it has never been done in the white house and in the east room was george and martha sitting there. we were going to do that for the first event. we are finding some of the hottest young voices. this one kid lin-manuel came up

and barack and i were like you going to perform young man and he said i'm going to do a rap about alexander hamilton. [laughter] that's when you remember you are at the present in the first lady and cannot laugh in the face of your guests and go what? are you kidding? the anyone not to perform the first number. i would be the first number he prepared and it was obviously amazing. afterwards we were like that's really good. he said yes i'm going to do a whole broadway show on it. we were like good luck with that kid. [laughter] and then it blew up and we invited the whole cast back and they performed. first they had a whole day of workshops for kids from all over the country so they were doing lyric writing and you name it they were in the red room

writing and wrapping in the blue room and dancing in the yellow oval, you name it they were everywhere. then they did the performance in the east room with all these kids who would never gotten to see the broadway performance but they all knew the words. so we had fun. we had lots of fun and a all of our friends involved kids. they jeff: everything better. we wanted to make sure that kids felt like this white house belonged to them, that they felt like when they walked into it and kids of all backgrounds that like this was a place that kids were supposed to be not like peering out the front gates but they would walk in those doors and experience everything that was going on in there. all the things we are doing the work wearable to do with young people that were the most fulfilling and most impactful

work that we did in those eight years. >> oh yeah i'm wrapping in the blue room. >> we did the whole design workshop with designers and there were mannequins so we did the whole workshop and they helped put it together. we had some the top designers come. it was a way to give an amash to all the american designers who would work with me but not to make it about me. had to be about it so they came for a day of working with all these young designers around the world and they were making jewelry and different rooms and they came together for a panel and they had diane von furstenberg and all these big names came and they spent the day with these kids. it was about them but it was also about -- in. those are the ways i tried to think about linking the stuff that people wrote about to something that was important. it's like okay you like my shoes but let's teach the kids how to

be designers and what this craft means in america. that is not just about how you look at what you do. >> and all of that was fun. >> and the kids -- the kids left feeling like i was at the white house. >> they felt like they were someone special. we have a mentor that we never really publicized that i've worked every year with the group of 20 girls from the area because mentoring has always been a big part of my life. he had some young men that would come once a month and there were usually kids from the area not the top kids and the kids struggling but those kids that are in the middle where there aren't a lot of programs for them and they would be. up with those high-powered women in the administration. valerie jarrett was a mentor and the first female executive chef at the white house who was

appointed, she was a mentor and they would meet with these kids all the time. they would come together once a month to the white house. it was interesting to see their transformation. and when they first started they were shy and they couldn't look me in the eye. they were nervous because it's nerve-racking. you are in the white house and you are meeting michelle obama and why were you picked and you were wondering. we kept on talking and eating popcorn and by the time they had usually two years with us by their graduation when their parents would come they felt there was just a shift in who they thought they were. they felt comfortable in that space and in that room with me. they knew that they deserved that for themselves. it's that process of giving them that exposure on a regular basis saying you were worth the. i don't even care about your grades. who are you as a person and you

are worth being talked to and listen to. after while they owned the place. they didn't even notice me. it's like oh yeah mom that's michelle obama crew we are old friends now kamala me show you the blue room. they have a confidence and my belief in them was if you can walk into the white house and look in the eye and introduce yourself there is no room you cannot go in. there is no room you can't go in after that. [applause] >> right before we started there was a high school -- a high schooler and she's here for the first time. librarians hope to recruit her. >> hi honey. >> any advice you might give a high schooler about college. >> how old are you? the

>> 17. >> you are going to go to college, right? that's the first advice, go to college because you needed high school -- a college education if you would be competitive. there's so many different ways to get an education. we live in the united states of america and you can have wonderful community colleges. we have four year colleges. there are so many ways to do it. there's no one right way to do it. you don't have to go to a four-year school and live in a dorm if that's not your thing. it's an excellent experience if you can do it that you have to get an education beyond high school. that is a must. a high school diploma is not enough anymore. we want you to be the very best you can be to be a looked at take care of your family and have power and all that good stuff. having an education is the key to that. that's my advice in a nutshell.

[applause] >> we don't have much time left but i have to ask you about the book. >> it's coming out in november. >> are you guys read it? [applause] you have to give us a few things so we can both talk. as we do. >> i have given you a few tidbits but if i were to describe the book it's a re-humanization effort because for me as a black woman from a working-class that ground to have the opportunity to tell her story is interestingly rare. i think that's why some people asked the question how did you become -- how to did go from

here to there? people think i'm a unicorn. it's like i don't exist. people like me don't exist and i know that there are so many people in this country and in this world who feel like they don't exist because their stories are told or they think their stories aren't worthy of being told. in this country we have gotten to the point where we think that there's only a handful of legitimate stories that make you a true american. so if you don't fall into that narrow sort of line it's like you don't belong. but we all belong and i think my book it's the ordinariness of a very extraordinary story. i hope i telling it, that it makes others not just black women and not just black table but other people other women and people who feel faceless and

invisible and voiceless to feel the pride in their story in the a way that i feel about mine. the ordinariness about growing up as a working-class kid with two parents who had values and they didn't have a lot of money. i grew up with music and art and love and that was just about it. we were encouraged to get an education. i am not a unicorn. there are millions of kids like me out there. it's just a shame that sometimes people will still me and they will only see my color and then they will make certain judgments about that and that's dangerous for us to dehumanize each other in that way. we are all just people. [applause] with stories to tell. [applause] and we are flawed and broke in and there's no miracle in our stories. we are just living life trying to do good and that's who this

girl was becoming. >> she as becoming a lot of things in life the journey continues and i hope that starts the conversation about it. it encourages so many other people because we need to know everybody's story so we don't forget the humanity and each other. what we learned rock and i've of course of the years and traveling around the country is that americans are good people, decent people. even if we don't agree on politics, and we have to remember that about ourselves and understand that that's true not just here in america but around the world. there are no doubles out there. there are no people out there. there are good people who do bad things but all of us are really just trying to figure it out. if we done something really horrible it's usually because we were broken in some way. if we understand each other's stories and we share those

stories maybe we can be more empathetic. maybe we can be more inclusive. maybe we can be more forgiving and be more open so i hope the book encourages some conversations around those kinds of things. then you will hear about china -- the china, couple of nice stories. the dogs are still alive doing well by the way. [applause] >> i just have to tell you we are clad to you are michelle obama. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> thank you carla. thank you all. thank you for everything you all do. keep doing the workout in the community. we need you. [applause]

[applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] >> that concludes another book into booktv's archives for the reminder you can watch all of the programs he saw the first ladies tonight by going to our web site booktv.org. and a reminder that c-span published a book in the series on the first ladies which you can also access on line.

>> when you read the things that were said about thomas jefferson and that he was an infidel and an agent of the government it sounds a little reminiscent reminiscent, doesn't it collect the things that were said about abraham lincoln and the things that were said about fdr that he wanted to be a dictator. so it does come with the territory but i think in trump's case a lease in the modern political era post-world war ii have never seen anything like it.

>> welcome to another summer evening with booktv's first wife series. we are for missing -- focusing on books written by the former first ladies. the first first lady was nellie taft who recalls her time in the white house in a 1940 memoir recollections in four years presents and 10 other other first ladies have published memoirs. we are going to focus tonight on five women who have served in that position in the last 50 years. first